Professor Rollins is dead.
It all started on Thursday. When I got to the local coffee shop I searched the crowded room for her familiar black-clad, silver-haired figure. I finally spotted her waving me over to her corner table.
She always did seem to believe my guesses and hunches, and now that I have something solid to base them on…well, she was almost as excited as I was. I could tell by the way she was sitting—hunched forward, cradling an enormous mug of black coffee, tapping one foot impatiently. A large, flat package rested under her chair.
"What've you got there?" I asked as I made my way over to her.
"This is for you, for later. Let's see what you've found."
I could see that the photos intrigued her, but she went to the journal first. I forced myself to drink my cappuccino and let her read without interruption, thankful that she hadn't asked me how I had obtained the documents.
At last she looked up. I wasn't expecting her to look worried.
"Gabriel," she said slowly. "Have you checked the dates in this? The continuity doesn't make sense. It starts in January of 1815 and goes right up through the 1950s—1955, to be exact."
I hadn't expected this response, and I was kicking myself for not at least glancing through the rest of Bishop's journal to prepare for our meeting. Rookie mistake.
I forced a smile onto my face. "That's even more exciting, then, right? A family history! His descendants must have continued keeping the journal. I might actually be able to track down surviving members of John Bishop's family and see if any oral histories of the Disturbance have survived the last 190 years."
"Gabe," her voice tightened, "the entire thing is in Bishop's handwriting."
I pride myself on rarely appearing confused in public, on maintaining mental coolness and control no matter what curveballs life throws at me.
"Uh…what?" I grabbed the journal from her, almost covering it in cappuccino. I flipped as quickly as I could through the volume, trying not to injure the brittle pages. Each was filled with the same precise, slanted cursive. Over and over, the leaves told the same story. A familiar feeling of desperation began boiling in the pit of my stomach.
"Maybe the first part is real, and someone just copied the handwriting after Bishop died?"
"Gabriel, I've studied primary source documents for the past 25 years. This is the same writing. We might assume that the entire document is fake."
"It was buried in the archive, Sarah. Why would someone take the trouble to fake the journal and then leave it where no one would ever find it?" I was talking too fast, but I had to hold onto the truth I had found. Bishop was in those pages—it couldn't be a forgery.
"Slow down, Gabriel, and let me finish. We might also assume that it's…real." She picked up the photograph of the soldiers standing in front of the UFO. "The men in this photograph—have you identified them?"
"That's Isaac Bishop in the front. The rest…"
"Are you certain that is Isaac?"
I stopped my headlong drive to spill as much information as possible. "Well, the photo was taken around 1866, and I assumed that—"
My adviser held up her hand. "Maybe now is a good time for me to show you what I've brought." She slid the package from under her chair and handed it to me. It was heavier than I'd expected.
"I discovered this in an antiques shop near my ex-husband's apartment. The owner didn't seem to know too much about it. She told me it had come from her boyfriend's mother's attic, and they'd been trying to clean the place out for years—in short, they had no idea what they were selling."
I began to fumble with the brown wrapping, and a framed portrait slipped easily from the paper shell and landed in my lap. An eagle-faced man, proud, with dark hair curling over his ears, stared out of the painting.
"Isaac Bishop!"
"Gabriel, all evidence points to the fact that this painting was done before 1827. I am fairly certain it is by Peale; he was dead before Isaac was thirteen years old. The man in this portrait is at least thirty years old."
I didn't see at first what Professor Rollins was getting at. Impatient, she shoved her heavy-framed glasses back onto her head and jabbed a blood-red nail toward the picture. "John. John Bishop, Gabriel—painted around 1815 or 1816."
If I had been a cartoon character, a big puffy lightbulb would've appeared over my head at that moment.
"The person in this portrait is identical to the man standing in front of the UFO in your photograph, which was taken almost fifty years later. Those years were kind to him, don't you think?" Her eyes glittered as she held the photo in front of my face.
I tried to get my mind around that one. John Bishop had unnatural long life. John Bishop…an immortal?
Professor Rollins searched through her purse and pulled out a scrap of paper with an address and phone number, which she handed to me. "I told the shop owner I was interested in finding out more about her friend's 'collection.' The place is called 2nd Time Around, in case you're interested in checking it out." She stood. "I'm going to make some phone calls for you. I've got connections in some of the major government archives; they may be able to fill in more gaps on this John Bishop character."
She left me with cappuccino spattered down my front, clutching an almost-200-year-old painting, with more questions than answers. I'll never forget her parting words.
"We've uncovered more than history here, Gabriel—someone out there knows what's going on. Keep reading!
Sarah was sitting quietly at her desk when I visited her office on Friday morning. Nothing seemed out of place; the shelves of dusty first editions and gleaming new textbooks, the filing cabinets filled with student essays and course information, even her oversized "The Far Side" coffee cup were all undisturbed.
I had so much to tell her about what I had read since we met: that John had taken his family to the Western territories—that he had later killed his wife, Helen, in a fit of paranoid delusion. That he had accused her of being "one of them" before slitting her throat. That Isaac had seen the whole episode.
"Sarah," I began, but found myself trailing off. Something wasn't right. She was staring at me, not even blinking. "Sarah?"
A fly buzzed lazily into the room and landed on her eyelid, before crawling across her eye and flying away. She didn't budge. I rushed forward and found myself slipping in a sticky pool of blood; it was difficult to see because of her dark clothing, but her arms and sides were soaked in it. Two long, deep gashes crossed each wrist.
I reached over and closed her eyes. Then I puked all over myself, though I managed to get some of it in a nearby wastepaper basket.
Her death was later classified as "suicide," but I know that isn't what really happened. My adviser would never have done that to herself.
When I got home from giving my statement at the police station, I thought over what I hadn't told them. I wasn't sure how, but Sarah had made an enemy. The blinking light on my answering machine confirmed it with even more finality than her dead body.
I tossed my keys on the counter and pressed "play."
"You will cease your investigations into the matter of John Bishop immediately, or you will suffer the same fate."
It seems I had made an enemy as well.