James Steimle - The Kukulkan Manuscript

Her mind wandered to Professor Ulman.

What did they mean when they said Ulman had disappeared? People didn’t vanish. There was no logic to this. Why would Ulman choose invisibility after making such a fantastic discovery, after working in Guatemala for so long? Alred couldn’t come up with any reason at all, but wrinkled her brow and pressed her knuckles to her lips. She stared at the patrons of the cafe for a while, as irrational thoughts darted through her head.

She had to focus.

How many others were involved in Dr. Ulman’s Guatemalan discovery? If Dr. Albright was able to write a paper on the find already, he must have had detailed knowledge of Ulman’s work long before she’d learned of it.

The thought of murder flashed like a memory from a movie in her mind. Could someone have killed Professor Ulman? She didn’t want to consider that absurd possibility. After all, who would do it? Another scholar? Dr. Albright?

Staring again at the title before allowing her eyes to gaze out the window, Alred drank her coffee and ordered another.

Two more coffees later, she ordered an ice tea.

Alred had turned to other articles in the journal and fell entranced in their ideas until there weren’t any more.

The snuggling heat of the cafe and the thoughts that continued to jumble her head at every pause made her very uncomfortable. She pictured Ulman running for his life from thugs hired by jealous scholars, and other such nonsense. She knew it was all absurd, but she was exhausted. Every time she looked down at Albright’s article with the silly title insinuating early transoceanic contact between two separate worlds, her mind began to run away. She watched her favorite professor passing through customs, only to be mugged, kidnapped, tied, gagged, and thrown over a bridge. She shook her head and imagined him getting inside his car, turning the ignition, and “Something else to drink,” Bruno said, wiping a glass with what looked like the same rusty towel he’d been using for over an hour.

“Water,” she said, trying to ignore the washcloth.

She went to the bathroom. She had to stretch before attacking this essay. Her blood had slowed too much, and she looked at her watch: 10:12.

When she returned, the water waited for her next to her magazine. She took a sip and set the glass down before noticing…words, quickly scrawled next to the title of Albright’s paper.

In blue pen the letters read,

Can you believe this?!! Figure it out Alred!

Alred stopped thinking.

She read the words again without realizing she was holding her breath.

Standing quickly, Alred looked around the cafe. She scanned over everyone’s face as fast as she could.

Looking down, she read the short sentences again. Again. Again. She touched the words. The blue ink came off on her dry index finger.

She jumped to the front door and pushed it open.

“Hey!” Immediately Bruno was behind her in the doorway as she took three steps into the dark wind. “Not thinking about taken off before pay’n, are you little lady?”

Alred looked through the blackness, but didn’t find anyone. Few cars pushed by the cafe on the two-lane road. Three empty automobiles waited against the curb, one of those across the street in front of an out-of-business donut shop. Yellow lamp lights painted everything a dirty orange color.

She kept her feet still, so as not to panic the old man, but her eyes went through every car window, ducked under every tree pushing out of squares chopped in the sidewalk, cut left and right through the shadows, searching…

“Little lady?” Bruno said, watching her wisely.

“Did you see anyone at my booth after I went into the restroom?” she said.

Bruno shook his head beside her. “Was keep’n my eye on you and my work. Someone take your purse? No one steals from my place! I’ll-”

“No, no. I just thought…”

Slowly she turned back into the warm cafe, and Bruno left her alone, though she felt his eyes following her.

She went back to her table and read the words again, written just to the left of the title. She sat and stared at the two sentences and Albright’s title for a full minute. “What’s going on here?” she asked the air in a whisper.

Catching Bruno watching her from a distance with a concerned look on his face, she closed the scholarly magazine and gathered everything in haphazard order to leave. Freezing, she thought about all the people who could have written the words. Why? What did they mean? She opened the magazine again and read the message.

Can you believe this?!! Figure it out Alred!

Bruno appeared again, looking busy and just conveniently in the area, though Alred had seen no customer near her booth for the past hour. “Everything all right, ma’am?”

Her face wouldn’t change shape. She pictured other students she knew writing the message. What would they know about it? How did they know this was her booth when she wasn’t present? She pictured Professor Masterson scrawling out the message with his thin fingers holding a gold pen, his face smiling in a twisted knot of tight flesh. Or Professor Kinnard, or Wilkinson, or Arnott, or Goldstien. She had seen professors pop into the cafe twice since she’d arrived this evening. Both had been from the Math department. Why would any of these instructors write these words?

Perhaps Porter had come by, seen the journal, and deduced it to be hers!

But Alred had the nagging feeling that this was what Ulman’s handwriting would look like in a hurry. He’d written her from Guatemala when he first thought he was close to finding something.

Porter or one of the other professors wouldn’t have seen her journal since she sat so faraway from everything.

She crushed her eyelids together, not wishing to ponder the question any longer. She moved to pack up again, but saw the old man with the wise blue eyes. “You wouldn’t know anyone by the name of John Porter would you,” she said. But realizing how silly that must have sounded, she quickly looked away, amending the question with the words, “No, of course you-”

“John D. Porter? Know him good and well! The tall skinny Mormon boy who gets a grin when he knows he’s make’n other scholars sweat under their collars? Just haven’t learned what the D stands for!”

“Have-have you seen him? Has he been in at all this evening? Maybe just now?”

“Not today,” he said with a grin. She could see the wheels working behind his gaze. This Bruno was obviously one of those fellows who thought twice as much and three times as fast as common folk. He looked more regular than anyone else, but could likely solve all the world’s problems from right here in his cafe.

But Alred didn’t want his help.

“Thanks,” she said. “Another water please.”

“Haven’t finished your first,” he said, indicating the one by her left hand.

She looked across the cafe to the glass door and the darkness beyond. “Yeah,” she said, with her mind searching the street again for someone leaving the place. She hadn’t been in the bathroom that long! No matter how many times she went through the possibilities in her mind, she couldn’t figure out what had happened. There were more questions than there were answers.

She nodded at the old man, and he smiled and left her with the journal. She opened her notebook and prepared to read what looked like a waste of time, but was now tied to…to what? Blue ink?

If there were answers, Alred had to find them. More now than before. If it was a race to study the new find, then she’d burn the oil of all ten virgins. She’d stand on the shoulders of Albright and Porter. She would succeed and benefit. But most of all, she would find the answers to her new questions. And she’d figure out what had happened to Ulman.