James Steimle - The Kukulkan Manuscript

Nice doctor. He got his check.

Running fingers through his wet hair, he held his breath as a blue Chevy passed, vomiting invisible smog.

He’d left the Kalpa site in a hurry to get back to the states. It was very peculiar, he thought, passing the stop sign. Peterson had taken off the day before him, and Albright had no idea what had happened to Ulman…though he had suspicions.

A colorless Ford Taurus with bright lights rounded the corner.

With a snarl, Albright lifted a hand to protect his eyes.

He dropped it and listened to the car pull to the curb and die some twenty feet behind him.

So why had the University requisitioned KM-1, Dr. Albright’s codex?

Made him too famous, he figured.

That was fine. His first article was published, and a more thorough paper would be finished tomorrow morning.

It wasn’t illegal, his possession of KM-1. Not mostly.

He’d passed through channels…bribed, his way, that is. Wasn’t too hard to obtain the necessary paperwork. Easier to purchase than he’d thought it would be!

But the University had frowned on his measures and said they would keep it, “For legal purposes.”

Right.

Okay. Albright had plenty of notes and a complete set of photographed facsimiles of the manuscript and a great deal of the ancient library where KM-1 had been found. He’d already made plans for the publication of a set of volumes tentatively entitled The Hidden Library of Ancient Kalpa. But Dr. Peterson argued that they could not yet conclude that modern day Kalpa had any relation to the lost city, so the title would have to be amended after they’d learned more.

Peterson had decided to focus on the site itself, which to Albright’s knowledge still didn’t have an accurate mnemonic distinction. But Albright suspected that Dr. Peterson had smuggled a manuscript of his own into North America. His colleague was not beyond such actions, when necessary. Not that all professors of Archaeology and Ancient History would do such things, but…no one had found something so feasibly controversial as they had.

Or Ulman, rather.

Whatever. It didn’t really matter anymore.

Albright suspected Ulman had never left Guatemala.

There were reasons.

Was Dr. Ulman’s body rotting under a bush crawling with Mesoamerican spiders? Most likely. Unless the larger animals had gotten him.

Albright shook his head. He shouldn’t think about it.

Death.

He’d read in the Tribune that a Stratford University professor of History had been murdered. Why would anyone want to kill old Dr. Wilkinson? No taste for his archaic clothes? The paper said it may have been done by a convicted felon named Raymond Polaski, presently sought by the authorities. Red hair, short beard, blue eyes, Caucasian, medium weight, withered left hand, 35–40 years of age. Why did Albright remember the description so well?

Albright gazed behind him.

A shadow leaned against the stop sign he’d passed seconds before. A yellow light behind the figure solidified his silhouette. The phantom looked at Albright, but didn’t move. Albright thought he saw breath release like cigarette smoke into the cold air.

The professor turned away.

Now growing paranoid, Albright thought. Need a good ten hour nap!

Why would someone kill the professor? Angry student? It wasn’t unheard of.

Ulman was dead.

Wilkinson executed.

Where was Peterson?

Okay, Albright admitted to himself. KM-1 and the site might be worth murder…to some people.

Albright’s heart pounded. But for all the wrong reasons.

How would he get the manuscript back from the University? He thought of three ways to steal it. None of them would work. He wouldn’t make it as a criminal. There had to be a bureaucratic way.

He looked back.

Death moved in perfect stride with Albright’s feet.

It’s nothing.

A withered hand? Of course not. But the shadow’s flanges rested within coat pockets. There were no eyes either.

Albright kept walking, his feet involuntarily doing double-time as the ghost followed.

Sweat trickled into his right eye and stung as if two parts alcohol.

Albright wiped it away and thought about Peterson. Where was he anyway?!

Buried?

No. On sabbatical…of course, hidden from the world, trapped in his big house shrouded by empty night. Dr. Alexander Peterson, proudly writing his great archaeology text, no doubt centering on the newest and most outstanding of all Central American finds!

Still could be dead.

Albright glanced back.

The guy was closer.

Well what-d’-ya-know! Second wind!

Albright started jogging again, pounding the asphalt with cheap tennis shoes as he crossed to the end of the last block.

Down to the next stop sign, then left. Almost home.

He turned back.

The shadow jogged with him. Same pace? Just a little closer.

Albright made for the end of the block at top speed. It had been years since last his legs felt the strain of sprinting. They’d forgotten the correct coordination.

Throwing himself forward, feeling the killer puffing with poison white breath on the back of his ears, Albright let his mouth hang loose.

Had to get home!

He didn’t care if anyone saw him flying like an out-of-shape fool.

He hoped someone did!

He heard the feet slapping the ground behind him.

He felt the shadow overpower his mental energy; a ring wraith from Tolkien’s world, commanding his feet to stop.

Albright refused to listen.

Running mad. He pumped his fists from his hips to his cheeks.

The weight of his body bounced.

But I’m not that fat!

Toes pointed. Heels kicked against the thorns behind him.

The power of the sprinting shadow reached at him with giant hands.

The air chilled.

The hands grabbed Albright’s left forearm.

Albright screamed, but kept running.

The black beast, the murderer, the dark assassin had him, but didn’t.

His head swam with a white mist.

Albright didn’t stop screaming.

He turned the corner, ignoring the claws, the knives, stabbing his arm.

The shadow commanded the ground.

The curb lowered beneath Albright’s feet, then rose abruptly.

Concrete hooked Albright’s right toe.

The dark sky disappeared. white lightning flashed inside his eyes.

Albright rolled on his back, dropping into the gutter. His head roared with pain as if run over by a truck. He felt cold wetness in his hair.

The shadow stooped over him, breathless.

The streetlight behind the being created a halo of fire around the black hole in man shape. An alien. A spirit. An executioner. Death himself!

Talons tore at Albright’s left arm.

Albright grabbed his chest with his right hand, opened his mouth more widely than his watering eyes…and never closed it again.

April 18

8:33 p.m. PST

“Thanks for coming, Porter,” said Kinnard, looking out of his drapeless window into solid blackness. “I’ve gotta meeting I’m already late for, but I had to talk to you before you went home today.”

“If I had a phone in my office, you’d be to that meeting right now,” Porter said, casually taking a seat. The white walls of Kinnard’s room and the soft color of the bookshelves contrasted the window and the cherry wood desk. “I think you need an interior designer.”

“To make my office looked as stripped as your own?” Kinnard said, forcing a small smile. He moved to his chair, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. “You won’t need a phone, Porter.”

“Well, I figure-”

“You won’t be in the office long enough.”

Porter’s playful grin froze. His eyes went dead.

Kinnard looked at him for a moment with sobriety in his telepathic words. But, of course, Porter couldn’t understand. “I suggest you simplify your dissertation. Cut all the corners you can.”