James Steimle - The Kukulkan Manuscript

“What did you say your name was again?”

“Oh,” Porter said with a fake laugh, “John. Peterson will know who I am. You work here?”

“My father does,” she smiled, young and pretty but as skinny as a mortal girl could become. She was literally a skeleton with an epidermis layer, one of those girls who saw fashion models as both unreachable and ideal examples of female figures, but tried to attain their supposed weight anyway. The anorexic result was unfortunate. Porter couldn’t help looking at the skinny poles with tendons and knobs halfway up which she used for legs as she climbed a few steps. The site repulsed him. Porter felt like a child with a cut on his hand that would heal if he’d leave it alone…and of course he couldn’t. He kept looking at the white corn stalks contrasting the candy-apple red carpet on the stairs and kept wincing until she looked back.

“Better wait there,” she said. “You’re not another student from the University, are you? Dr. Peterson’s already sent a number of them away. He is on sabbatical, you know. That’s why he’s not in his Columbus house.”

“No,” Porter said with a smile. “I’m from out of state. Only here for a few days.” He looked up the staircase at the bookshelves all along the top landing walls, trying to read the titles, which were too faraway. How could any professor afford all of this?!? Porter had no idea, but thought it best not to ask.

“So he is expecting you?” said the young lady with sky blue circles around her pupils and frosted brown hair. She’d be gorgeous if she put on a little weight, he thought.

“These students come unannounced?” Porter said.

“He shows them away when they call. They think he’ll help them out if they appear in person.” She pointed at him with a needle for a finger. “John?”

“That’s right.” Porter watched her go up the stairs and pass left and through a door he hadn’t seen.

He had no intention of waiting for the professor. If scholars had one thing in common, he figured, it was a degree of selfishness if the product was new enough. Ulman’s sure was! And Peterson probably wouldn’t be that keen on sharing it all with an eccentric Latter-day Saint.

Cutting quickly through one doorway, Porter started scanning for stairs. “Where would I study if I lived in this house?” he said. It had to be on the second floor. Maybe the third. This house was bigger inside than it looked. Places this size always had more than one staircase.

Weaving past other servant and doing his best to act as if he was a guest, and hoping his calm silence worked, Porter went up the stairs in the east wing and slid with quiet feet through the halls. Unless Peterson was prompt, Porter expected to have a couple of minutes to find what he needed and get out. If the professor was working on his book, he’d either tell the young lady to get rid of the visitor, or he’d come after ten minutes of making ‘John’ wait. Porter was betting on the latter.

Porter peeked in rooms and dodged mumbled conversations made by shadows striding by him without seeing anyone else until he poked his head into what had to be a den.

Closing the door behind him, leaving it slightly ajar so he could hear anyone coming up the hallway, Porter scanned the room. Beautiful Victorian wood curled under every table and over every bookshelf. There was plenty of light from the brass lamps hanging about. A fire cooked the Ohio air, giving it a sweet incense odor and filling the study with blankets of warmth.

“I’d fall asleep in here!” Porter whispered to himself. His eyes examined the heavy desk in the center of the room. Massive. Bright lights beamed over the piles standing in perfect order. Rolls rested together like sacred scrolls waiting to be opened by the pious. Two stacks of hand-typed pages stood on the right side. Three books hid beneath a fourth Porter found open and unfinished. They were handwritten journals.

He drew closer and saw the words: Kalpa, and KM-1, and buried site. Porter remembered the article Peterson had written for the Archaeological Journal, “The New Mesoamerican Mystery: Guatemala’s Hidden Treasure.” He took one of the scrolls made of modern paper and pulled off the rubber band.

The air in his lungs evaporated, and he stopped breathing.

It was a hand-drawn map.

It had to be Ulman’s site in Highland Guatemala. A small scale at the bottom implied the enormity of the find. The buildings, the towers, the canals, the streets…it was hard to fathom. Porter’s brain seemed to roll inside his head as dizziness set in.

He shut his mouth, closed the roll and grabbed the others, jamming them all under his arm. He’d examine every detail once he was safe. His eyes glanced at the door, still unmoved.

He looked at typed pages, tempting him. His eyes darted to the journals, which he closed and gathered in a scramble.

Porter came around to the front of the desk, knocking the black leather chair aside.

The fire popped behind him, and he spun to face it.

Nothing but hungry flames. Again he smelled the sweet wood burning.

He looked back at the claw-footed desk, at the dark wood drawers running down the front.

Good antique contraption. No working locks.

He checked the door. No one.

One of the rolls fell from under his arm.

But his free hand was already pulling a drawer open. Envelopes, pens, a small tape recorder.

He slammed it quietly and grabbed the next drawer. Wrenching it open He almost fell backward at the sight. He swayed, but his free hand caught his weight on the sinking leather of the chair.

Warm leather.

The pages in the drawer were the same. Crisp, but malleable.

Someone had been heating the seat only a few moments ago.

It was definitely bark paper, just like KM-2. And it was real! And it was in the states! And it was right in front of him! He saw the letters. All of them less Mayan, more pseudo-Egyptian.

Instinctive hands grabbed the codex, took up the fallen rolls Crack!

Porter turned his eyes to the fireplace again.

Only the flames.

Cold metal gently touched the back of his neck.

“John D. Porter…I presume?” said a British voice.

Nickel-plated. 44 Magnum, Porter’s subconscious said as he raised himself slowly. He hadn’t heard the professor enter and couldn’t see him now-it had to be Dr. Peterson. Porter looked down at the ancient manuscript in his hands, unable to believe its reality, unsure there was really anyone in the room with him at all. The blood drained quickly from his head. “I’mmm…going to pass out,” his voice slurred.

“Well then, think boy!” came the British voice through a cloud. “Put your head at knee level.”

Trapped, caught, subdued, and losing the real world as he stood there, Porter lowered himself away from the cold barrel of the pistol until his head sunk below his waist. His throat made a weird sound, and he felt tears rising in his eyes.

Dad’ll be proud of me now! Porter said to himself sarcastically, considering his situation. “I can explain why-”

“I already know the reason you are here, John,” said the Englishman as he walked around the desk into Porter’s peripheral vision.

The doctoral candidate (turned madman) lifted himself to his full height. He looked into the professor’s squinting eyes, realizing the man didn’t hold a gun at all. inlaid with silver, a brown cane with a steel tip pointed at Porter like a spike. “Put it down.”

Porter swayed as if he didn’t understand the words. His eyes glanced at the door on the other side of the desk.

“Unless you have a metal plate in your head, I doubt you would stand a single blow of this blunt weapon, Mr. Porter, now put my papers down!”

Porter dropped all of it carefully onto the desk and backed away as Peterson examined the attempted theft. Everything was present, though a little crushed and out of place in this organized room.