James Steimle
The Kukulkan Manuscript
PROLOGUE
May 7, 1997
I, John D. Porter, have done at last that which I thought I would never do.
Who will blame me? Who can be my judge after all the trials that have eaten at me since Dr. Ulman found the codex?
I fear I am trapped at the end of the chase.
No more games.
No more answers.
I honestly believe that no human starts a day with the clear intention of engaging in a crime which is undeniably evil. Even Cain in the Old Testament thought he was doing that which served his best interests. That’s the motto of modern culture.
It is an angry mouth chewing on me each minute now, a creature which ignores intelligence while feigning a prudent brow for a reason I have yet to understand.
I know this shall progress no further than today. I may never learn the end of the story.
Who is left to trust? What mortal can I lean on…in this, my final hour?
I wish Alred had never gotten involved. She can’t hide anymore behind those strong eyes and her stalwart posture. Alred’s a good person. She’s the only one who’s been with me from the beginning. I’d like to think she even understands…
Now I cling to the only thing that hasn’t been taken from me: my painful testimony of the reality of the unwanted codex.
Surrounded by many, I feel…alone.
I pray this is not my last journal entry.
CHAPTER ONE
January 31, 1997
10:42 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
“I know they are going to kill me.”
New year rains fell like needles from unseen clouds in a black sky, a constant and cruel battery warning him of the doom to come.
But Christopher Ulman had never been more excited!
Automatic gunfire pounded in Ulman’s ears as he slammed the door shut and bolted it with a thick piece of wiring. Dropping his papers on a makeshift desk and his duffel bag on the ground, he lowered himself quickly in the dark onto his bed and rammed his fingers into his temples.
The bed was made up of an old sleeping bag with a broken zipper, a sheet that badly needed to be washed, and a beaten pouch of lumpy feathers that he called a pillow, all laid out on a solid board he’d procured from a stranger.
His shaking fingers scraped a match against the rough metal of a Spanish lantern. The flare reflected off the cold glass and momentarily filled his nostrils with sulfuric fumes.
Lighting the wick, Ulman turned off his flashlight.
He tried to smile, but had to squeeze his eyes shut. He forced happy thoughts into his mind of Greenwich, the small town in eastern Illinois which had spawned him. He remembered the white porches and the picket fence that surrounded his boyhood front yard. He conjured up visions of the dry leaves of autumn smashing between his toes, and for a moment he wondered if he could smell the sweet dust kicked up by new rainfall.
But the booming thunder above beat at his forehead, reminding him that his cozy memories were only lies now. His past was gone forever.
Buckets of water splashed down on the roof, which had proudly been made by the son of a roof-mender- Ulman was at last happy for the skill his father had pushed upon him.
And the gunshots started up again.
AK-47, he thought, remembering Vietnam. Painful emotions exploded to life: friends left in the jungle for good; old companions absorbed by a chaotic war, never returning. He wiped his forehead, his mouth gaping and then slamming shut. “How can I be thinking about the war?!” he whispered, digging his fingers into the inner corners of his closed eyes. A taste of salty water laced his lips. It was the same sweat and rain mixture he recalled from the Orient.
He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. Would he live to see tomorrow? he wondered. Would they raid his tiny fort, or bomb him without warning? Best to die in a sudden bang than to know you are being killed? Smiling and frowning, Ulman recognized he’d asked the same question on a daily basis in Vietnam.
The gun fired again, hurling waves of bullets from afar. He pinched his eyes closed and thought about the weapons carried in the unclean hands of the guerrilla soldiers. He could picture the short warriors, drenched like he was; black eyes poking out of dark faces; brown skin hiding them in the shadows; Ulman felt the chill of the fear and anger of the Vietcong.
Shaking his head slowly, he rubbed his temples as tears slid down his cheeks. He was soaked, but still certain of the tears. With a smile he realized there really were no Vietcong soldiers around him. The shots came from the sky; the normal roar of thunder.
His hands trembled, but he wasn’t cold.
Ulman knew he was in trouble. He wanted to think about Illinois again, but his exhausted mind failed to comply. His dreams came to life and fought to choke his perception of reality. He didn’t want to sleep. He worried that if he lost consciousness…he might not ever wake up again.
Having not rested to the degree human bodies require, Ulman could feel the thick cotton in his brain. It was hard to concentrate on anything. His thoughts slid from dark visions to unwanted memories, from his trapped reality to dream and then back into his haphazard hut again. When his eyes opened, they looked to the soiled papers on his desk.
The table, as skillfully thrown together as his precarious shelter with the nice roof, did not look much like a desk at all. Off-white food-storage buckets with another flat board set on top had become a garden for steadily growing piles of note sheets and worn books. Many of the volumes were open, and a thought rushed through his mind that the spines were being damaged. He didn’t care anymore.
His face dropped, and his right cheek pressed against his sleeping bag. Ignoring the men’s-locker-room smell of the bedding, his eyes looked to his more important treasure. A small chest, two feet long and one foot wide, held his prized discoveries.
With glazed eyes closing on their own, he smiled again.
As his mind, longing to dream, interrupted his coherent thoughts, he saw James G. Masterson, the chair of the Department of Ancient History and Anthropology at Stratford University, standing behind his oval desk. Ulman watched the old man lean on his desktop with two spidery hands, his brow hard and his lips shoving up into his large nostrils. “Do you honestly think I can allow you to publish this paper?” Masterson’s voice boomed. “Don’t you realize the ripple effects this kind of report would cause?”
“I don’t care what happens!” Ulman heard his own voice reply in dream. “In fact, I’m looking forward to the outcome!”
“Looking forward to it?” the Chair said. “I cannot allow it! I will not!”
“Then I’ll publish it on my own!” Ulman said, his voice stern and unwavering.
