CHAPTER 15
On Wednesday morning Corin made coffee and plopped onto his couch ready to play artifact detective. He pulled up Google and punched in “chair of Christ” and in .24 seconds got nothing. Nothing on Bing or AltaVista either. “Chair made by Jesus” didn’t bring any hits either. Jesus made furniture, didn’t He? Tables, plows, benches, chairs. Isn’t that what carpenters back then did? He had no idea.
Then he stumbled across an article talking about a saint named Justin Martyr who lived in Galilee during the second century. Martyr said it was still common during his lifetime to see farmers using “plows made by the carpenter Jesus of Nazareth” into the second century.
Good. This was promising.
If a plow being battered daily by dirt and weather could last one hundred-plus years, why couldn’t a well-cared for chair last till today?
When he typed in “religious artifacts” things got even more interesting.
He clicked on a link that said Sudarium of Oviedo and started reading.
Fascinating.
The Sudarium was a blood-stained cloth thirty-two-by-twenty inches that Jesus’s head was supposedly wrapped in after He died. And tests on blood from the cloth confirmed a common blood type among Middle Eastern people but rare among medieval Europeans.
Pollen residue showed strong evidence the cloth was at one point in the Palestine area.
Corin read further. Nothing about the Sudarium healing anyone.
Next was a link to the Image of Edessa, a picture of Christ allegedly sent by Jesus Himself to King Abgar V of Edessa to cure him of leprosy, with a letter declining an invitation to visit the king.
Now he was getting somewhere.
But as he read on, it was clear rampant speculation far outweighed the facts.
Corin kept clicking.
According to legend The Veil of Veronica was used to wipe the sweat from Jesus’s brow as He carried the cross and rests in Saint Peter’s Basilica.
He skimmed the research.
Nothing about it having healing powers.
He clicked past the Holy Grail. Indiana and Henry Jones had taught him all about that one. But at least that legend supported the idea Christ objects could have healing powers. No, actually, it didn’t. That was a movie and as he read further, it confirmed his feeling. There was less evidence for the existence of a real chalice than for the Sudarium, Image of Edessa, or the Veil.
He skimmed over articles on pieces of the cross, nails from the cross, the Coat of Christ, and the Crown of Thorns.
Again nothing about those objects healing anyone.
Corin sighed and stretched. The best he’d come up with in three hours of research was maybe something Jesus made could have lasted until today.
Time to see what the Bible said about healing.
His fingers flew over his laptop keyboard and he watched Google splash multiple Bible verses onto his screen.
Twenty minutes later he smiled.
He copied three verses into a Word document, saved it, then printed the page and read through over it, his smile growing into a grin. At least according to the Bible, the idea of a chair with healing powers was very, very possible.
Acts 19:11–12: “God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.”
Matthew 14:35–36: “People brought all their sick to him and begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed.”
Mark 5:27–29: “When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.’ Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.”
Corin leaned back and smiled. Handkerchiefs, aprons, and clothes. Why not chairs? Especially one constructed by Christ.
And it sat in his store smack-dab in the middle of the picture window.
Not good.
When he got to the store he would move it to the hidden vault at the back of his store.
What next? He needed to talk to someone who knew more than Tori. But who? Corin strolled into his kitchen, stuck two pieces of eight-grain bread into the toaster, and brainstormed. Before the toast popped up he had an answer.
After slathering both pieces with a robust amount of strawberry jam and pouring himself a glass of nonfat milk, he settled back onto his couch, Googled churches, and dialed the first one listed.
“Hello, Cold Canyon Community Church.” A woman with voice two ticks beyond perky answered.
“My name is Corin Roscoe and I’d like to talk to someone about . . .”—what should he say, ‘I found a magical chair that might be healing people?’—“a possible religious relic.”
“What is it?” The perkiness dialed down four pegs.
“A chair. Very old.”
“Have you talked to an antiques dealer?”
Corin sighed. “I am an antiques dealer.”
“So why are you calling a church?”
“I think it might be tied into Christianity.”
“I see.” All perkiness was gone. “And how is that?”
“The person who gave it to me said it was made by Christ.”
The receptionist sniffed out a laugh. “That must be a very old chair.”
“It is.”
“She told you it was made by Jesus?”
“She didn’t right out and say it. But she strongly implied it.”
“I see.”
The woman didn’t offer anything else.
Corin rubbed his eyes. “Would I be able to talk to someone about it?”
“What would you like to know?”
“If there’s . . .” Corin hesitated. What did he want to know? If it was real? If it had really healed Brittan? “Did you see the story in the paper the other day about the kid who was healed of his asthma?”
“Yes.”
“The chair he sat in was mine.”
“I see.” The woman again offered nothing more.
Corin shifted the phone to his other ear. “I was hoping to talk to someone who knows about religious artifacts . . . someone who might be able to explain if this whole sitting-in-the-chair thing and him getting healed is a coincidence or if some kind of miracle really happened.”
The line buzzed for ten seconds.
“I’ll tell you what,” she finally said. “If you’d like to give me your name and number, I’ll find out who the best person is to talk to and have him give you a call back. Will that work?”
“Fine.” Corin gave her the information, hung up, and stared at his cell phone. No one would be calling back.
He dialed two more churches and had the same conversation.
Corin didn’t blame them. It sounded like something out of The Amazing Spider-Man. Who was he kidding? He should probably just stick it on the floor with a hefty price tag, write up copy offering up the idea it was made by Christ, and make some coin.
Who could he talk to about it if not someone from a church? Tori he’d already dismissed, he didn’t have any friends who were religious, and the lady who gave it to him hadn’t followed up on her promise to stay in touch.
A moment later Corin laughed. He knew exactly who to talk to about it. Maybe not someone who knew about ancient healing chairs, but definitely someone he could probably talk into experimenting on: A. C.
A. C. rode with him on all his extreme adventures. Why wouldn’t he go on this one? When A. C. dropped off that rolltop desk this afternoon, Corin would get his friend to go for a little ride in the chair.