The Inca Prophecy

16 Breakthrough

Javier Mantara could not pay attention in class. It was not the first time. Since his sister had committed the unspeakable crime outside her nature, he’d been having trouble functioning even on the most basic level. Even his classmates kept their distance, concerned that his erratic habits and subsequent deterioration was the result of drug abuse or some other mysterious malady.

By the looks of him the young man was ill, yet he exhibited no symptoms of any well-known diseases. His skin grew paler by the day, while his eyes had begun to look slightly milky, a dreadful vision to any observer. Javier was lurching about, unlike the way in which his usual rigid posture would carry him like a smooth conveyer belt. It was alarming to see how his usual outgoing and friendly manner had diminished into little more than a withdrawn glare, coupled with the odd sniffle.

It was not long before his lecturer, Prof. Loreno, asked Javier to stay behind after one of the evening classes to have a word with him. Prof. Loreno was genuinely concerned for the young man and wished to find out what was burdening him. In the buzzing white light of the small office behind the classroom, once but a storeroom, Prof. Loreno waited for Javier to enter before closing the door behind him.

“Thank you for staying behind. It won’t take long, Javier.” The professor smiled.

“Por favor, the lights,” Javier rasped.

“Why?” Prof. Loreno asked. “Does the light hurt your eyes?”

“Sí,” Javier replied softly, holding his hands over his brow to shield himself from the crass illumination. “It feels like needles in the back of my ocular cavities, Professor. Hurts like hell.”

“Your voice also,” the lecturer remarked, as she turned off the light and switched on her desk lamp, “sounds affected by your condition. What’s the matter, then? Have you seen a doctor?”

“Is that why you called me in?” Javier was laboring to speak clearly.

“Yes. I was concerned about your welfare and preferred to find out from you than to get outside opinions from speculative strangers,” she told him.

“I’m very grateful, Professor. The last thing I need is for people to make assumptions about me. To tell you the truth, I’m just relieved that this meeting is not about my progress in the curriculum. You had me worried that I was failing the course, or that my conduct was in question,” Javier said.

“Oh, no, no,” she dismissed his presumption with a smile and a waving hand, “there’s nothing lacking in your work at all, Javier. I’m quite impressed with your aptitude for psychology. As a matter of fact, I was thinking about talking to you regarding your further studies. You would do great in pursuing psychology as a vocation.”

“That’s good to hear. Gracias, Professor.”

“You deserve to be given the chance, but that’s why I’m so worried about your health,” she conveyed. Her silver hair was taken up in a bun, tucked neatly back above the collar of her white cotton blouse. She wiped her hands on a small towel to get rid of the moist annoyance the heat had brought.

“To be honest, Professor,” he shrugged, “apart from the pain I feel in my eyes when the light is too sharp, I feel alright. My throat is a little sore, but I figure that is from the choking heat we’ve been having. I mean, it’s been debilitating on most of us over the last few days, hasn’t it?”

“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.