Return to Atlantis

Chapter 27 - Home (2)

That alien lady - is she lying?

Ava slowly retreated from the lab floor, turned about and quietly closed the door behind her.

*******

"I deduced that this is where Professor Kinksi hid himself from the world when he disappeared and went on recluse 15 years ago," Phil said his thoughts out loud to the boys as they crossed a lengthy cobblestone driveway surrounded by an expansive front yard filled with overgrown trees, shrubs, and bushes to get to the manor where Ava Kinski disappeared into - about a hundred metres away. The surroundings and the manor were illumined by moonlight which all the more gave it the desolate, lonely, and almost eery feeling of the place.

"Before showing up at the doorstep of the United Nations when the aliens came you mean?" Alec prodded.

Ahead the men could see that all of the windows of the manor were boarded shut so it looks like no light could penetrate in or out, except now for the light streaming out of the front door that Ava had kept ajar or rather did not bother to close.

Phil started narrating. "Ah - the Kinski's! They were a prominent family. They owned giant corporations and many other businesses. Each member had a hand in the businesses, well, except for the geeky Waldo Kinski whose only passion is science and invention. But it has often been said that the clan is cursed."

"Cursed? What curse?" asked Sanders.

"Throughout the family's history," Phil went on. "There have been a couple, if not many, instances when a whole family in one generation have passed away, natural and accidental causes, leaving only one surviving kin, always male. This is the unfortunate thing that happened to the Professor."

"Seriously?" chimed Alec with a disbelieving smirked.

Phil nodded. "Those were the rumours. Yet as luck would have it, the Kinski's still thrives up to this day after so many generations of this unfortunate curse. So it seems the surviving kin had always managed to carry over the clan to a whole new generation."

"That is quite an interesting tale there, lieutenant," said Sanders.

"You don't have to believe it," said Phil. "Anyway, as the surviving kin, Kinski was not interested in the family's wealth and prominence so he sold everything away...er...well, more like 'abandoned' everything the Kinski's own. Then he disappeared. Being a well-known genius then, the intellectual institutes in the world searched for him to no avail. He was even believed to have died. But today I think we just discovered where he hid himself all those years he was missing. What better place than here, a rural place in the Philippines. No one would think to look here. And a few years after that, we know that Kinski came back from the dead....and the rest is history," finished Phil.

"So Miss Kinski probably thinks her father is hiding out here again when we told her he is missing," Alec said.

"Explains why she seems to be in a hurry," said Sanders.

"But if he is here, which we know he is not, her actions would be like deliberately trying to lead us to him," Alec said.

"Well, it seems to me she could not care less, right, lieutenant?" said Sanders. Phil nodded to that.

"To prove us wrong may be," Alec said further before looking up with a thought. "So she grew up here as well...no worse than Sybil."

"Well, there was a rumour before that Kinski's daughter had supposedly died," Phil shared. "But now we know that is not true."

The boys made it to the front door a little while later.

The house was the exact character as its owner, Alec thought. Monotonous and lifeless. The spacious interiors are well provided with sleek and ornate but dated furniture, but nothing of it clamours for curiosity and attention. It was also very clean and trimmed, suggesting that someone is keeping the house. Alec had lived in a house like this one---a very well-kept house. Phil on the other hand was reminded of a five-star hotel---not that he's ever been in one.