James Steimle - The Kukulkan Manuscript

Porter leaned against Alred’s door frame a different man than the one Alred had met two weeks earlier. His slacks sagged, two rips in his right pant leg. The shine in his black shoes had been put out. His simple hair hung, unwashed and sticky. Both eyelids were welts through which he peered at her, and white bandages wrapped around both hands.

Alred didn’t even know he owned a leather jacket. She never would have guessed Porter could dress himself in something worn so badly at the shoulders and the elbows. What did he do, sleep in it? The building was well-heated, but he kept it zipped to his collar bones anyway. She imagined his conservative button-down shirt fit the rest of his nasty attire.

“The zombies walk,” he said. “Are you alone?”

“I hate zombie movies. How did you find my address?” She walked into her tidy room while Porter closed the door behind him. Her dissertation would be ten times better with the codex in her hand, so she played along, preparing for some ecstatic lie explaining his costume and more pointedly, his crime.

“Followed you home yesterday,” he said.

She looked at him, huffing silently that she was right. He’d been here all along.

“Anybody looking for me?” said Porter, looking at the glowing twenty-gallon fish tank on his right, three half-dollar sized crabs wiggling their small legs beneath two diving goldfish with bulging eyes.

“Dr. Arnott came by yesterday,” said Alred. “He said he had some information for your ears alone.” She didn’t hide the suspicion in her eyes. “What would that be?”

Porter fell onto her heavily pillowed couch just past the fish tank. “Mind if I sit down,” he asked, staring at something many dimensions away with concentrating eyes. The room smelled of rose potpourri. Pink, dusty rose, and burgundy colors dominated.

“I went by your office every day,” she said, getting a glass from the cupboard. She opened the refrigerator, pulled out a pitcher, and poured.

“I never went to the office.”

“One of the secretaries let me in,” she said, handing him the glass, sitting beside him, watching as he examined the translucent brown liquid. “Thought I’d…take a look at KM-2.”

“You brought a screwdriver then,” he said, smiling a tired grin and smelling the drink. “Wasn’t in the vent, was it. What is this.”

“Iced tea.”

Handing it back to her, Porter said, “Can’t drink it. Water?”

Alred felt her muscles clench. She took the glass, stood, and went to the sink where she dumped the mixture and rinsed out the vessel. She refused to let loose the irritation she felt building. Redirecting the energy, she pondered what to ask next. Where had he been? What did he think he was doing hoarding their precious book? Didn’t he know she could get him into further trouble with the university if he thought he could “Someone tried to kill me,” Porter said. “I think they were after the codex.”

She handed him the new drink and sat on the pillowy lazyboy chair opposite the couch. “You…expect me to believe that line?” The words just came out. Oh, well. She’d take responsibility for them and find out what was going on.

Then a voice, a vision, a memory, spoke where the brain meets the spine. You’re in danger…and so is your friend. Her back bone reacted involuntarily, sitting her upright with an icy touch.

Porter told her what had happened after she’d left the library.

He explained it all: the bookshelves, pushing the lights out of the way as he skipped across the tops of the cases dodging bullets; breaking through the glass on the second floor; hiding in the hotel. When he came to the experience on the roof of his apartment, Alred was amazed at the detail in his story. He jumped to the tree? Dropped everything? Escaped professional gunmen? From which movie did Porter steal these pictures?

“I think you have a very active imagination, Porter,” she said.

The shock on his face froze like cooling clay. “Go look, Alred, the Eucalyptus on the side of the building is busted in two places! They still haven’t cleaned it up!”

“There’s been a storm the last few days,” she said in a flat voice, pushing the hair behind her right ear.

“What does that have to do with anything?” he said.

Alred leaned back in her chair. “Eucalyptus trees on campus always drop a limb here or there when the winds pick up enough. I don’t doubt there are branches in the parking lot next to your apartment, but how can I believe everything else you said?” Her voice was strong, and she meant it to be. She wanted him to know she wouldn’t be pushed around anymore. This was turning out to be her least favorite semester at Stratford, her only consolation being the knowledge that she’d be done in two weeks.

Porter stared at her. A single flickering light hid deep inside his gray eyes.

Alred watched him close. What was this look he gave her? Abashed hope? Abandonment? He looked like her last dog, Vespucci, that gaze when she’d left him with new owners. She saw those dark eyes looking at her through the screen, watching her say good-bye for the final time. There was no way the animal would know she’d never return. But she felt Vespucci’s confusion, happy hope, questions, worry…sadness? Or did she project all those feelings.

Porter was human.

He looked into her for almost thirty seconds before reaching down his right side.

Alred looked at his busy fingers, working up the soiled and torn pant leg.

Close to the knee she saw a cut, taped up poorly with medical tape. No bandage. The wound had a thick black scab glistening with hints of red which had already assimilated portions of the white tape.

“I don’t know…it might need stitches. Real glass doesn’t shatter like it does in the movies. I thought it best to do it this way to help seal the gash.”

Alred looked at his bandaged hands, then up at his face. She felt the blood leave her head and her tension release. Her mind went into overdrive, running through his story, collating the hard pieces, the ones that mattered. She heard the whisper of the ghost who had visited her the night Porter started running. Her unpainted lips parted. She pictured the smashed codex on the pavement and the men in black apparel sprinting for it, and Porter scurrying away like a maimed animal.

“You…left…KM-2?” she said, eyes gawking, but only seeing the image of the ancient book shredded on the asphalt.

He nodded, fixing his pants. “For them. I lost all my notes.”

“Who cares about your notes! Porter?! How could you give them the codex?!”

Relaxed, he said, “I think I can still remember the bulk of the important things. I’ll have to find it all again, to be sure I’m citing correctly.”

Alred’s brain did a somersault and then a few more tricks. Her heart beat like a runner’s as she put all the insinuated pieces together, all the parts of this jigsaw with too many holes.

“You didn’t have the codex, so you weren’t in danger,” Porter said, lifting a finger to remind her he’d insinuated this point before.

In danger, said the ghost in her head.

“What?” she said, staring at the fish tank radiating a blue light on Porter’s left, then at a painting of two Eskimos boarding an umiak on a cold river.

“That’s what I think, anyway. I stayed in a motel while they no doubt tore up Stratford trying to find me,” he said, unzipping his jacket.

“But you said-” her eyes locked onto the bent book he removed from the hot cavity between the black suede and his stomach. The bark paper crumbled in front of her, small pieces dropping to the floor.

“I need a bag, a box or something, before this is completely ruined,” Porter said, looking at her kitchen.