James Steimle - The Kukulkan Manuscript

Alred pulled her head back.

She looked troubled when she left. Porter couldn’t blame her.

But he had too much work to do. And if someone wanted to kill him over it, he had to do it even more quickly. Time to figure things out. All the implications.

His eyes stung with lack of sleep. He didn’t dare look at his watch.

He glanced for only a second at the manila envelope with the edge of the obituaries poking out.

The library would be open all night. The same every weekday. It was a new policy the students had fought for just last year. A bit revolutionary, but Porter took advantage of it. Librarians dimmed the lights after 10:00, probably as a tactic to dissuade students from coming after that hour. If no one came, the managers could fight the board for the right to close at a decent hour again. They’d win.

Porter rubbed his face and looked around.

He knew someone was on the lower level, but the fourth floor was devoid of life, save himself…and a cricket he thought he’d heard half-an-hour earlier somewhere beyond the stairs. Fourth floor! What a feat that must have been for a little black insect that couldn’t fly! He thought about it until he saw himself as the insect, climbing the cream-colored walls, the naked stairs, the bookcases, not knowing where he was going.

Lost among the stacks, Porter the cricket dug his way through the volumes. Skipping from one title to the next. Hoping he’d find some direction, a clue to the way up or out.

Whisper.

What was that? He spun around too fast. His cricket legs rubbed and a chirp erupted.

Cats weren’t aloud in the library. But he could sense them sliding through the bases of the shelves.

He couldn’t outclimb the creatures. He couldn’t hide motionless forever. If the felines didn’t see him, they’d hear him, smell him, track him down by following his droppings…

“Shhhh!”

Porter lifted his head from his books and note pads.

He’d dropped to sleep.

But he heard the whisper again.

In his mind, he replayed the shush shouted in silent breath, like a wind let loose among the catacomb halls of manuscripts. Yet, he knew no sound escaped anyone’s lips.

He thought about Albright, running…

Footsteps on the stairs.

He pictured Wilkinson with the letter opener in his back.

Closer now, but slower…more careful…quiet…

Dr. Ulman…

Silently, Porter stood.

Wailing metal against wood, the chair betrayed him. The sound echoed from each shelf to the wall to the stairs.

The codex.

Porter took it, still in its brown bag. The paper whispered to the cricket.

Sleep choked Porter’s brain. He tried to shake it away. Now was a good time for adrenaline. Gazing with wide eyes at the stairs, he saw the shadows of people rising from below.

Had the librarians gathered to mob the one student who dared to stay all night?

Unlikely.

Imagination.

But on his mission in Japan, Porter had learned to trust his feelings.

He took up his briefcase with one hand, slipping his notes into it quickly. He bit his lips with his teeth. He grabbed the paper with Albright’s death notice and dived into the shelves.

Through the volumes, Porter saw the men in black. Nice suits. Turtleneck shirts under the coats. Very stylish. But why all dark?

The guns weren’t hidden. Nine millimeter. Silencers?

Only two of them.

Had Porter served as a Marine, he might have opted to fight and find out who these men were.

But he was a scholar.

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but books don’t deflect bullets.

April 22

1:40 a.m. PST

The ghost appeared that very same minute.

Alred couldn’t see it directly. It was a shadow in a raven black room. Standing. Breathing. Watching her rest.

She knew she’d been asleep, for a moment earlier she was in the grand Victorian house of her great aunt who lived in Peru, Nebraska. But the house wasn’t the same as it had been when she’d visited as a child. She was quite young again, but that didn’t matter. The walls were whiter than she remembered, the ceilings higher. The house swayed in the wind on a hill of green that hadn’t been there. And she wept deeply, seeing the grave stone bordered with pansies and other flowers, pink and yellow, which she didn’t recognize. Carved in the granite were the words, JACQUELYN ALRED.

Alred loved her great aunt. No relative had been so kind, making sweet cookies with peanut butter or chocolate chips on the rare occasions when she’d come over. She’d only seen the woman as many times as she had fingers on one hand. But Alred cried when she saw the stone. And tears covered both cheeks as she wandered round the mansion-three times bigger than she remembered it-with the soon-to-be new owners.

The house no longer belonged to the family. There was no more family. She had to leave.

Standing on the grass which leaned and relaxed repeatedly in the comforting breeze, Alred said her good-byes…

And was in her room again, awake and aware that something else phased in and out of the molecules of darkness around her.

She looked…but didn’t turn on her light.

Of course there was no one “Alred…”

The apparition stood where it didn’t, oscillating like a mirage of shadow, there…but not there…then…

“Alred, can you hear me?” said the fiend, the monster that shouldn’t be.

The door was closed, locked, the window sealed.

“I’ve come…to speak to you.”

She smashed her pillow with the back of her head.

Alred could smell sulfur in the musty air.

The phantom looked at her, waiting for a reply. It had no feet she could see, no facial features but those it created to look human, no hands at all for they were too complex to mimic well. It was a cold breeze holding still in the tepid room.

“What do you want?” she said.

“Alred…can you hear me?” said the ghost.

“Of course I can hear you,” she said before realizing the mouth of the monster didn’t move in conjunction with the words that came out. It was like an old film from a foreign country, poor black and white, with the actors shifting their tongue behind bobbing lips while no sound worked with them. Even now, the vaporous man opened his mouth and beckoned with unheard words. He spoke for nearly ten seconds before she heard anything.

With his arms at his side the shadow with features said, “I don’t dare touch you.”

“You got that right!” she said, realizing if she turned on the light he would cease to be.

“But I’ve…brought you something. And I need you to listen.”

“Go away,” said Alred, tears still in her eyes from her dream. But the words had no force by the time they left her throat.

The ghost stepped forward. Or was it a slide more than a gait?

Shrinking in the mattress, Alred couldn’t move.

Clink.

She looked at the oak nightstand to the right of her bed. Was something there, by the clock where nothing had been before? It looked more like a stain…a mark…of the ghost.

She could feel the apparition behind her now, close to her ear. Spinning her head around, she saw the ghost near enough to kiss.

“Just…”

She saw his mouth moving, saying words that didn’t reach the mortal world. Petrified, she listened.

“…tell…my wife…I’m…okay… She’ll know what this is for.”

Closing her eyes tight, she bit the inside of her cheek and tasted salt. She knew the voice now. She knew what the face was supposed to look like.

“I have to go,” said the spirit.

She watched the shadow, staring at her from the wall hidden in the darkness.

“Keep looking over your shoulder, Alred, ” he said, passing into nowhere, but visibly going away. “You’re in danger…and so is your friend…”