Irrefutable Proof: Mars Origin "I" Series Book II (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Father
Chandra said he was from John Carroll University.

He
handed me his business card that had their logo on it, his name, and a phone
number. But it wasn’t embossed and looked more like it had been printed on a
laser printer than at a printer shop.

 Standing
with the door propped open, I asked, “How may I help you.”

“I’m
a Jesuit priest.”

“Yes.”
I said, smiling but thinking,
what does that have to do with anything?
But,
I figured just like old people, you have to be nice to priests. But how nice, I
wasn’t sure, seeing that I wasn’t even Catholic.

“I
understand that you are an archaeologist.”

Wasn’t
sure if that was a question or statement.

“Yes,
I am.”

“Do
you mind if I come in,” he asked.

“What
is it that you need?”

“I
work on a committee that is assembling a team of scholars to go to Italy
next May to work on deciphering the Voynich Manuscript. Have you heard of it?” he
asked.

I
wonder if Dr. Abelson has something to do with this.

“Are
you needing my recommendation for someone? Is this for Dr. Hannah Abelson?”

“Actually,
it’s for you.”

For
me. Hmph.

He
looked harmless enough. But if he wasn’t, and I let him in, I wasn’t sure that
Mase would hear my screams over him yelling at the TV. Sounded like his team
was losing.

I
pulled the door open wider. “Sure. C’mon in,” I said. Stopping at the foyer
table, I looked again at the card, flipped it over and back and stuck it in the
table drawer.

I
walked him into the living room. He pulled out a pair of glasses, put them on, and
started walking around the room as if he were surveying it. Surveying me. His
glasses perched on his nose. He walked over to the front window, head down, then
he lifted up his eyes over the rim of the glasses, looked out of the window, and
turned to look at me. He stood there smiling with his hands behind his back. He
had on a black shirt, white collar and black pants. He had brown skin and black
hair, he looked about fifty. But really well-built for his age. And he didn’t
look like a killer. So that was good.

“Do
you know the person parked out in front of your house in the dark blue Taurus?”
he asked.

“No,”
I said, after going over to look.

I
gestured for him to take a seat in the chair by the window.

“Did
someone recommend me?” I asked sitting down on the couch, trying to push the
conversation forward.

“Yes.
And we - ”

“We?”

“The
Committee. The Committee thought that you would be a good candidate.”

“I
don’t know why,” I said. “I only recently learned about that book. I really
have no interest in it. I don’t know what it is.”

“I
think perhaps it may be of some interest to you.”

“Why
do you think that?”

How
presumptuous of him
, I
thought. But before I could say anything, Mase popped his head in the room.

“Justin,”
he said and raised his eyebrows as if to say, ‘What’s up with the priest in the
living room.’

“Mase,
this is Father Chandra. Father Chandra, my husband, Mase Dickerson.” They shook
hands and exchanged pleasantries.

“I’ll
be in the kitchen, Justin, if you need me.” Mase eyed me and nodded at Father
Chandra, who looked over at me and smiled.

“You
know that John Carroll is a Jesuit university?’

“Yes.
I know that,” I said. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“The
Voynich Manuscript came from a Jesuit library.”

I
shrugged.
And?
I wanted to say.

 “I
guess you didn’t know that?”

“As
I said, Father Chandra. I don’t know much about the manuscript, book or
whatever it’s called. And I’m not sure you have the right person. You never did
say who recommended me.”

“The
book has been around for a long time and no one has been able to decipher it,”
he said, seemingly ignoring my question. “Some people think that the book is a
hoax. We, the Committee, have looked over your vita and found that you are
fluent in several languages. And well equipped to translate difficult work. And,
it would seem that you’re able to read hieroglyphs and some cuneiform, so that
experience might help you work with symbols.”

Again,
wasn’t sure if that was a question or not.

“The
Voynich Manuscript,” he continued, “could turn out to be a very important
document.”

“I
don’t think it would be of any interest to me. As I said, I could recommend
someone who may be interested. Hannah Abelson. She’s a Professor Emeritus of
Semitic at Case. She’s an expert on languages and has already started work on
deciphering it.”

“We’ve
looked over
your
work,” he said, again not paying any attention to what
I was saying. “Read several of your scholarly articles. Very impressive.” He
smiled and nodded at me. “We also see that you’ve penned a work of fiction.”

My
breath caught at the back of my throat.
What the heck!
People who read
my book were coming out of the woodwork. He took off his glasses and looked me
in my eyes. As if he had said something profound. I guess he didn’t realize
talking about that book made me nervous. I didn’t say anything for a long
moment, and neither did he.

Finally,
I stood up. “Father Chandra, I really appreciate your Committee thinking of me.
But I don’t think this is for me.” I walked toward the front door. It was time
for him to go.

He
stood up and just stood there. He looked as if he was thinking. Perhaps about what
he could say, or do, to convince me.

No
such luck, buddy
, I
thought.

I
knew that no matter what he said, I didn’t want anything to do with working on a
committee to decipher that manuscript. I really didn’t work well with other
people. Plus, I had enough to do trying to find ancient manuscripts left by our
people from Mars.

“Okay,”
he said, still smiling like the Cheshire cat. “If you change your mind, you
have my number. Invitations to those selected will go out in May. I’ll need to
know before then.”

“Yes,
I do have your number.” I pointed to the table drawer where I had stuck his
card. “And thank you. Thank your committee, too, but tell them I’m not
interested.”

He
walked past me slowly, heading toward the front door.  I opened it for him, and
was met by three people standing there, one with her hand up, ready to knock. Father
Chandra stopped, looked at them, then turned and looked back at me. And, before
I could say anything, to any of them, I heard Claire coming in through the
back. She must’ve skipped the gym.

Lord,
my house was crawling with folks. It was worse than a tenement house with a
roach infestation.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“So
how can we help you get proof?” Addie said, sipping the coffee that she had me
make a whole pot of. She was lucky Mase’s uncle had come to stay with us when
he had some tests done over at Cleveland Clinic, because I never would have had
the stuff in my house.

My
visitors consisted of three people from the Westbury End Book Club in Baltimore,
Maryland. They had come to Cleveland because, it appeared, the ring leader,
Addison “Addie” Hayes, believed every word I’d wrote in my two books. And she
wanted to help me “get the evidence” so “we” – I’m guessing that included her –
could tell the world. She, her friend Rennie Brown, and her twin brother, Jack,
a Major in the USAF, and me and Claire sat around my kitchen to discuss how she
help me.

“Addie,”
I said. “I appreciate you wanting to help. But I really don’t think that
there’s anything you, or any of you could do,” I looked at each one of them. “It’s
not a game like
Clue
. It takes more than following directions on a card
to find out it was Colonel Mustard who killed Mr. Boddy in the Conservatory
with the candlestick. When I determine the truth behind ancient artifacts, I
scrutinize them, ponder over them and run rigorous tests based on information
gathered from years of research by other scholars and scientists. From tons of
scholarly articles. Tons of other disciplines. It certainly isn’t like it is on
TV or in books.”

“We
can be your Dr. Watson,” Addie said.

“Or
like Miss Marple,” Rennie added. “An everyday person who solve mysteries.”

“You’ll
need us, because there’ll probably be government officials after you.” Addie
glanced at Jack, “Although we do have one government official on our side, my
brother. But I’m sure,” she said, “they’ll be nutcase zealots, hired assassins
and other scholars in a race to find the proof first. We can watch your back.”

“None
of those things will happen,” I said.

Claire
laughed. “Yeah, but that’s just how you were thinking when we went looking for
the manuscripts the first time. Greg had to constantly convince you that your
murder and mayhem conspiracy theory plot wasn’t real.”

I
bit back a laugh. I did think people were out to get me. Not that I necessarily
wanted the three people sitting at my kitchen table to know that.

“It’ll
be like the book
Skeleton’s In God’s Closet
,” Addie said. “You ever read
that,” she asked me.

I
shook my head no.

“In
it people are trying to push this girl off a cliff and down into caves all
because of what they found at an archaeological site,” Addie said and then
looked at Rennie. They both giggled.

“Yeah,
but what
she
found was real,” Addie said and pointed at me.

Those
two had a book scenario for everything we talked about.

We’d
been talking for over an hour about my books and “my quest” as they called it.
And I found that I actually enjoyed talking about it. It’s not like I had many
people I could talk about it to.

Addie
had seemed to become an expert on the subject. She pulled out my books. They
were dog-eared and plastered with different colored sticky notes. That was a
part of a coding system, she explained to me. Seemed like it was going to be
hard to convince them that solving mysteries didn’t happen like it does in the
fiction she reads. She didn’t seem to care, though. She was in. One hundred
percent. She took right to me, calling me Justin, acting as if we were old
friends. Made herself right at home.

But
not Jack.

Addie’s
twin brother, Jack didn’t strike me as just a tag-along, or a ‘the Martians did
it’ convert. He wasn’t as invested in helping me solve the mystery. He stood,
leaning up against the sink. His arms folded over his chest, he stared at me
most of the time we talked. I offered him a seat, but said he preferred to
stand. I was just going to ask his opinion on what his sister was saying when
the phone rang. I looked at the Caller ID on my cell. It was Simon. This was
the third time he had called this week. I missed the other two calls and hadn’t
called him back.  

Must
be something important.

“Claire.
Hold down the fort,” I said. “I’ve gotta take this call.”

I
walked over to the family room that was an extension of the kitchen, and picked
up.

Not
his usual flirtatious self, Simon wanted to know if I had any more questions
about the Book of Enoch. I asked if that was what he had called so many times
about. I thought perhaps something was wrong. No, he assured me, he was fine, although
he didn’t seem his normal self. I told him that I had done some studying on my
own, but not much. And for some reason, I told him about my upcoming trip to Israel. Then he turned into Professor Abelson, throwing a bunch of questions at me.

I
swear. It was more than I could take. So many people coming to my house. So
much confusion in my head. So much noise from the cacophony of voices echoing
through my kitchen.

Book
of Enoch. Voynich Manuscript. Fictitious assassins.

My
mind was being bombarded with too much stuff.

I
hung up from Simon. Told him I’d call him back when my house cleared out. And
as soon as I walked back in the kitchen, Jack Hughes walked up to me and said,
“I need to know what you know about nuclear activity on Mars.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

October,
2011

The
fading daylight emanating from the darkening horizon leaked slivers of white
between the slats of the dusty, broken blinds that covered the windows. The howling
wind rocked the trees, their branches scrapping against the window pane,
cutting through the silence of the approaching night.

Books
and papers were scattered around the floor. A yellowish glow from a small
wattage bulb hid under an oversized lampshade, hanging precariously on the base,
which rested on the floor next to a table. Shallow, noisy breaths and scrawling
pen gliding across paper with a strange intensity filled the air in the small, sparsely
furnished room.

The
table was rickety and rocked from the pressure of the writer’s hand, but the
words, written in Sanskrit flowed easily.

Be still. Be light.

Cease the renegades darken path

Awaken still with sight.

Those that sleep outside the wall

Trust not for they will awaken and without
forethought

Be the cause of your fall.

All rises and sit in order in its season

Observe only from afar, transgress not
against their appointed order

Lest you commit treason.

More than what is of this world

Heard, above that remembered

Those are for true the things not to be
unfurled.

Be still. Be light.

For death can come quickly

When care for what you do is slight.

It
was done. The pen stopped. And the writer relaxed.

Justin
Dickerson was walking on shaky ground. She needed to stop, or be stopped.
Surely such a learned woman as her couldn’t overlook the seriousness of what
she was doing. She’d best take heed to this warning.

It
was put into an envelope marked “Urgent” readied to send to her. Her trip to
Israel better be Justin’s last on this mission she seemed bound to do.

Unless,
of course, she wanted to die.