The Inca Prophecy

by Preston William Child

  “I agree on that,” she groaned, wiping the back of her neck with the towel. “But there’s more to it, is there not? Look at you, Javier. You are wasting away. Have you eaten?”

  “I have. I am,” he protested, feeling a bit defensive to have to justify his eating habits to people who had no business asking. “I eat five meals a day, Prof. Loreno! Five! And here is a twisted little snippet for you. I sleep over ten hours a day! And I still look emaciated and exhausted.”

  “Alright. Alright, Javier,” she calmed him. “I believe you. I just wanted to hear it from you, my friend. All you need to do is to tell me that you are okay and I will let it go.”

  “I’m fine, Professor. Granted, I have no idea why I look so sick, but I assure you that I’m not suffering from some disease, and I am certainly not on drugs. My God, I don’t even like it when my sister brings vodka home.”

  Prof. Loreno sat down. She opened her desk drawer and fetched her fan, hoping to repel some of the pressing heat. “I can’t believe it’s this hot at night, can you?” she sighed, fanning herself and showing instant relief at the brief waves of moving air she generated.

  “That’s what I thought was causing me to feel under the weather,” he answered.

  “So, how is your sister doing?” she asked suddenly, leaving him vulnerable at her unexpected change of subject. “Has she been faring better with the therapy?”

  Javier was dumbstruck. Left speechless for a long awkward minute, he tried to make sense of the conversation. Since Madalina had fled, Javier had forgotten that not all the world knew about the incident. He was so deeply immersed in the nightmare, he had forgotten that the outside world was carrying on, regardless. Forgotten. Forgotten were so many things about normal life that he hardy realized that only he, and a handful of others, knew about his emotional toils.

  “Have you not seen the newspapers?” he asked.

  “I have. Why?” she frowned. “I mean, I don’t buy them, really. I sometimes just leaf through them while I wait for the bus or when I take a break in the university staff room. Why? What did I miss?”

  Astonished, he sat glaring at his teacher with his mouth open. He could see that the professor was feeling utterly self-conscious about her error, perhaps even a little taken aback by his response. “What am I not aware of here?” she asked again. “Tell me.”

  “My sister was involved in a bad situation that occurred at a local motel, Professor,” he divulged with a heaviness that filtered through his tone. “It was in all the local newspapers.”

  Frowning, she looked to the floor, trying to recall the extensive headlines and bylines she had scanned in the past few days. Javier was actually somewhat relieved that his teacher did not know about the ghastly act that had caused him such misery. “Oh God, I hope she is alright?” she finally said, wide-eyed. “I can’t remember reading anything of the sort off hand, but then again, this heat makes it difficult for me to even perform basic mental tasks. Please tell me nothing bad happened to her.”

  He hesitated. There was enough bad speculation surrounding Madalina and the circumstances under which she’d abducted a child and killed his mother. Here he had a chance to relay the terrible ordeal with more tact to a clean slate like Prof. Loreno. “My sister is missing.”

  That seemed to be the best way to put it—concisely. He left her to make her own assumptions based on this little bit of information, waiting for her to ask questions. But, to Javier’s relief, his tutor trusted his words and asked very little else. It was good to know that some people did not feast on the misfortune of others simply for the sake of judging them. Prof. Loreno gave him a look of mild sorrow. “I’m so sorry, Javier. Do you think she ran away? I hope to God nobody took her. What do you think happened?”

  Javier knew that his sister had fled of her own accord to evade capture, but he could not disclose this freely. “I don’t know,” he sighed. “All I know is that I hope she makes contact with me before I have to hear that she’s come to harm.”

  “Oh, my dear, I hope so too. I’m sure she will be okay,” she said trying to console him, yet her eyes looked doubtful and her voice wavered. “If she makes contact with you, I’m sure you will start to heal quickly. I’m certain that it is her absence that is causing your physical malaise. Once you know where she is, I just know we’ll be able to see the betterment in your condition.” She smiled warmly.

  Javier nodded in agreement, smiling to accommodate her efforts to cheer him up, but inside he felt grim. The silence was cumbersome, so Javier made an effort to end the meeting. He stood up and shouldered his bag. “Are we done here, Professor? I have to get home. I have work tomorrow.”

  “Oh, of course,” she said, jumping slightly in her realization of the time. “I have to be getting on too, before my husband gets unclean ideas of my tardiness.” The fifty-something lecturer chuckled sheepishly and switched on her main light to sign off on her work after Javier left her company.

  Outside the streets were teeming with parties of people out for a drink or dinner. Their congregations everywhere reminded Javier even more of how lonely he really was since his home was now void of Madalina’s presence. He had many friends and acquaintances, but a lot of them had abandoned social interaction with Javier since the incident. Long lines of cars were parked along the narrow roads, crowding up the already cramped streets.

  “Javier!” he heard a few meters behind him. “Javier, wait!”

  He turned to find one of his closest friends, Aldo, with two unknown men accompanying him. A bolt of panic shot through Javier’s body. Who were they? Cops? Why were they with Aldo? The three of them approached Javier from across the street, dressed in jeans and hoodies. He prepared to run if he had to. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Aldo, but he could very well have been held up to bluff Javier into their trap.

  “Hey!” he exclaimed moderately, not sounding too enthusiastic, but at the same time leaving enough for a dual response. “I’ve not seen you since last week.” He tried to sound casual. The other two men babbled among themselves as Aldo skipped onto the pavement and dragged Javier aside against the wall of a closed store.

  “Who are these guys?” Javier asked under his breath.

  Aldo frowned, looking a bit lost at first. Then he realized Javier was enquiring about his friends. “Oh, these guys? Just two of my friends from football practice. Listen, I have a message for you and I have to make it quick.”

  “A message from whom?” Javier whispered.

  His friend looked around briskly, surveying the crowds frequenting their immediate vicinity. In a hushed tone he said, “Listen, I don’t want to get involved in this shit with Madi, okay? I want you to know that this is a once-off favor I’m doing and then I am out, get it?”

  Confused, Javier frowned, “Out of what?”

  “Out of this whole jam with you and your sister and the cops. Just fucking listen. Madi called me from a landline in Sax, in Alicante. She can’t e-mail you and she chucked her phone, so you have no way of contacting each other. Obviously they are watching your texts and e-mails, right?”

  “Right, but what . . . ?” Javier tried, but his friend shoved him against the wall and gestured for him to shut up.

  “Sax, Alicante. Got it? Here,” Aldo whispered urgently, and shoved a small piece of paper in his hand, “are the coordinates she gave me. No address, just this. No involving me. Got it?”

  “Sí, sí,” Javier promised, feeling his heart flutter happily. Before he could thank him, Aldo and his pals had dashed off into the crowd opposite the street and disappeared.

  17

  Alicante Calling

  Solar Eclipse Imminent: 57%

  Javier hastened home to pack his bag for the trip to Alicante. His chest burned and his heart thundered, mostly because he had confirmation that his sister was alive and well. Although he was perfectly aware that it could have been a trap set for him, he could not think of a rational explanation for a set-up. No one was after him. They were looking f
or Madalina, so if Aldo were setting him up they would be sending Javier to Alicante for absolutely no reason. This, among a thousand other notions and scenarios, darted through his mind as he crammed a few articles of clothing into a canvas bag.

  The flat he shared with his sister, the home they had shared with their late parents for most of their high school years, was silent. Javier could almost hear the echoes of its coming solitude defy time and space as he got ready to leave. It felt as if the flat begged him to stay, as if it bemoaned Madalina’s leaving and feared that he would never return. Javier felt haunted at once. He called his boss and explained that he needed to follow some leads on his sister’s whereabouts and then called his aunt to ask if he could borrow her car for two days. She was reluctant, but once he elucidated that it was to look into some information about Madalina, she agreed immediately.

  With his work and transport obstacles sorted out, Javier trudged into the shower. He planned to drive to Alicante immediately, since he would never be able to sleep knowing that his sister had made contact with him. Night driving was favorable since his eyes were so sensitive of late.

  While he was under the showerhead, one thing came to mind. What had she done with the boy she was so obsessed with? Javier wondered if she still had the child with her or if she had relinquished him to the care of some old convent, true to the tradition of unwanted children in fact and fiction. Javier had removed one of the two ceiling lights two days before to soothe his sore eyes. He looked down as he ran the washcloth over his body. An inadvertent gasp came off his lips as he noticed the condition of his skin, and the bony mounds protruding on his hips.

  “Dios mío!” he shrieked through an impending raw throat. “What the fuck is happening?”

  Javier was horrified to see how rake thin he had become in little over a week. It was unnatural, he reckoned, for his body to have reduced itself to almost half its original size. Had he changed his eating habits, he would have thought it possible to lose this much weight. But he had not changed anything. As upset as he had been since Madalina disappeared, Javier had retained his nutritional habits. He slept normally, maybe even more than the average person, yet his eyes felt heavy and sensitive. If this were a virus, where would he have contracted it? Even after searching the internet, he could find no disease that correlated with an exact match of his symptoms.

  “I’ll see a doctor once I get to Madi. I will. I must,” he decided out loud, picking at the sporadic films of skin that peeled from dry patches on his abdomen and arms. Repulsed, he winced as he stripped pieces of dry skin off like paper. “Oh Jesus! Oh sweet Jesus, this is not happening.”

  Done with watching his body shed like a snake, Javier wrapped a towel around him and shut off the water. When he came into the bedroom to get dressed, a shadow figure scared him half to death. It sat in his chair in the low light, making no sound, but it moved to the side and reached for the light switch.

  “No!” Javier protested, but it was too late. The ceiling light of the bedroom was strong and stung his eyes, prompting him to cry out in pain. His hands covered his eyes. “What do you want?” he wailed. He did not look. He could not see who was there, because he dared not open his eyes. “What do you want?” he screamed.

  “Keep your voice down or I’ll cut your goddamn throat right now, Javier,” he heard as he sank to his knees. It was a voice he knew well, a voice he hated.

  “Dr. Sabian,” he announced calmly. “I knew you were behind this.”

  “In the state that you find yourself, my boy, I would be a lot more courteous if I were you,” Dr. Sabian warned. “And you have already done most of your damage, spreading that ridiculous theory of yours around, so don’t think I will not resort to . . . shall we say, snuffing you out.”

  “So why don’t you, you creep?” Javier defied him, still unable to look. “Why are you infesting my home with your witchery? Just kill me if that’s what you think you can scare me with.”

  He could hear Sabian get up, his footsteps rounding towards where Javier was kneeling. The soft crunch of his weight on the carpet fibers ceased, and Javier heard him speaking from his left.

  “Where are you going so hastily, inaquosum?” he asked.

  “None of your fucking business,” Javier sneered. “I can go anywhere I want.”

  “Going to meet our beloved Madalina, perhaps?” Sabian hissed. “I know, you see.”

  “Because you are an evil son of a bitch with a sixth sense,” Javier barked.

  Suddenly Dr. Sabian’s voice came from right next to him, startling him into a jerk. “No, because your friend Aldo told me. Perpello.”

  Javier felt betrayed. In disbelief, he held back the tears of rage that begged to surface in his eyes. Sweat rolled down his bare back. “He would never tell you anything! It does not take a psychic to see what kind of vermin you are. Aldo will tell you to go fuck yourself before he snitches on anyone!”

  “That is precisely what he said, you know?” Dr. Sabian smirked, turning off the big light so that he could speak to Javier, eye to eye. “Just before I skewered his skull with a rusty burglar bar from Conchita Bakery’s basement window.”

  “You’re lying, you bastard!” Javier seethed, his defective eyes blazing with hate.

  “Oh come now! Come on, Javier,” the wicked Dr. Sabian replied with that hideous serenity that made his manner even more unbearable to tolerate. “How else would I know that your sister in in Sax, waiting for you to join her? Hmm? How would I know if our late friend did not share it with me? Lucky for you, I need you to take me to her. I do not have the details on the little piece of paper you tore up.”

  “No!” Javier exclaimed. His mind was whirling and his soul was furious, sad and loose inside him. He could think of no other retort but the single word. As if it would undo the truth, he kept shouting, “No! No!”

  “Shhh,” the serpentine shrink said, trying to eased him and running his hand over Javier’s crown as if he were petting a dog. “Don’t lose your mind over this. You will still be given a chance to redeem yourself,” he grabbed the young man’s hair in his fist, jerking his head back hard, “if you don’t fuck with me!”

  Javier’s body ached, his dry skin taut over his knees. Dr. Sabian nuzzled his jaw. “If you lose your mind too soon, you are of no use to me. Make no mistake, boy, I can do this with or without you. Finding her in such a small town would be child’s play. Oh, and speaking of child’s play,” he chuckled. Javier could not weep, even though the rage asked for it. He watched the diabolical man sit down on his bed as if he owned it. “The child with her is very important, you see. This is all happening because of him. We’ve been waiting for a very long time for him and lo and behold, your sister’s unstable mind was our way to him.”

  “Our?” Javier asked, swallowing the urge to strangle Sabian.

  “My friends, a group of like-minded individuals aimed at fulfilling the prophecy this boy is part of,” Dr. Sabian revealed dreamily.

  “You are out of your mind,” Javier growled.

  “No, my dear Javier. I control minds, and superbly so,” Dr. Sabian smiled. Once again, Javier felt the heat of abhorrence consume him as the psychologist acted like some corrupt evangelist or dictator. “Typical of your generation to dismiss the great mysteries of ancient times as madness. Naturally you do not fathom the power that lives in the mind, having been brainwashed into believing it to be superstition. All that we are capable of is locked in our minds, at one with old forces that lingered here before time.”

  Javier decided that he would do better to play into the psychologist’s hand. Hostility would only afford him more trouble and his condition was faltering. In being agreeable, he realized that he would attain more information about the bastard’s plans for his sister.

  “What prophecy are you talking about? Why do you need me?” Javier asked plainly.

  “The Inca Prophecy of the Lost Cities,” Dr. Sabian answered. “We are bound for a great change in the status quo of the modern world
. We are the midwives of this prophecy, you see. It cannot come to pass without a little help from its believers.”

  “Its believers?” Javier pried.

  “The Black Sun prophets,” Dr. Sabian boasted. His smirk of defiance had now changed into a smile of adoration as he exalted his cause. Veneration dissolved into reality and Sabian realized that Javier was procrastinating. “Now, get dressed. We have a few hours’ drive.”

  Javier could not let Sabian get to Madalina. He hated to admit to himself that he didn’t really care what happened to the little boy as long as his sister was safe. She was the one Javier was going for, but he had no idea how to warn her, even less how to foil Sabian’s sick plans, whatever he had in mind.

  Across town, Pedro Sanchez, chief of the local police precinct, picked up the details through the bug he had planted in Javier’s watch. Looking decidedly impressed with himself, he saved the twenty-minute sound clip of the conversation between the prominent psychologist and Madalina’s brother. His wife was kind enough to leave him alone during his remote stakeout, but when she saw his face change into an expression of victory and contentment, she announced, “You are leaving, aren’t you?” Lira knew her husband well enough to know that he was about to go on a chase based on the information he no doubt obtained through his headphones.

  “I have to,” he answered, beaming. “Madalina Mantara is alive. She made contact with Javier, but they are both in trouble they cannot handle. I have to find them.”

  “I know,” she smiled. “Just please, please, be careful.”

  Sanchez minimized the active reconnaissance feed and started searching the internet for what he believed was a cult, by the sounds of it. Several links presented themselves, none of which featured anything about ‘Black Sun’. However, the police captain’s eye was drawn to something similar.

  “This looks close enough,” he murmured to himself. “A dissertation on secret societies functioning today? The Order of the Black Sun—Clandestine Chronicles of Madmen still perpetuated by Modern Society by Dr. Nina Gould, c. 2012.”