Master of the Estate is a riveting and suspenseful imbroglio of intrigues, characters, and literary traditions, all evolving around the search for possession of an ancient Egyptian scarab and a treasure believed to be buried somewhere on the Sanchez estate. This gothic mansion outside New Orleans, Louisiana, is surrounded by a swamp haunted by treasure-hunters who seek to cancel each other out and a mysterious creature from out of space and time. The protagonist of the story, predestined to host the ancient amulet, is a former heroin addict whom we first see in Atlanta in an abandoned house that he calls his. The joy of his first addiction-free day is shattered by shootings of rival cutthroats that rattle his dwelling.

The text enacts a historical archaeology that takes the reader from the post-Civil Rights era in America to ancient Egyptian civilization. This brilliantly told story also stages a palimpsest of literary paradigms including magical realism, postmodernism, the detective story (in which Worthy would be the action hero), and the picaresque novel, to cite only a few. Furthermore, the narrator deftly cites the works of William Shakespeare, John Milton, Francis Bacon, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and many others.

Salim Khalid is a rara avis as a fiction writer, with a compelling penchant for the mystery/sci fi genre.  He is originally from New Orleans, graduating from Alcee Fortier Senior High.  It is in the Big Easy that he became privy to the arcana and the folklore of Louisiana.  He received a B.S. from Mississippi Valley State University, and a M.A. in sociology from Texas Southern University, where he also studied history.  Salim’s current project is a sequel to ‘Master of the Estate’.

Three shots exploded in the cold, early morning darkness.  I could hear Louie shouting: “I got another one!  We got them on the run!  Angel and Nappy, pin them in!”  Without waiting any longer, I ran upstairs, returning to the limited security of the secret corridor.

It was then that I felt it, an unseen force pressing against my chest like an enormous, invisible hand.  Actually, it is rather difficult to explain.  I say that it was like a hand for lack of better words to describe the sensation.  When I stretched out my own hands before me, gingerly groping through the dark corridor for the source of the strange power, I found nothing.

Nevertheless, something inside of me urged me to return and confiscate the scarab.  I left the briefcase in my hideaway and nimbly descended the stairway.  When I arrived on the first level, I stayed low and crawled on hands and knees to the place where I thought Louie had concealed the ornament.  After a few confused moments of feeling around, I found the correct floorboards and the case.  I removed the scarab, shoved the item into my coat pocket and returned the case beneath the boards.

To this very day I cannot say what unearthly power compelled me to return to the first level for the scarab.  After all, I had a brief case upstairs filled with enough money to facilitate my return to New Orleans in grand style.

Whatever the source of the strange influence that drove me to that spot, I believed abandoned me at a critical moment, but I was not completely defenseless.  I grabbed poor old Bubba’s 45 caliber handgun and was about to dash for the steps when I heard a moan coming from the Madam.  I had thought the woman dead, so I hesitated, shaken, and reluctantly leaned over her disheveled form.  Here was my error.  Cutthroat Louie stumbled in, sweating, panting, but unscathed save for his smudged white suit.  Wafer followed close behind him.  When our eyes met, I faltered; I knew I was a dead man.

In the heat of sheer desperation I fired my 45, and was fired upon in turn.  After that, I saw only sparks of light and indistinct images.  Numbness rushed up my spine and I limply flopped down to the floor beside Madam Claiborne.  Something else penetrated my body.  It painfully ripped through my flesh, and I believed that I was being eaten alive, or had again been shot.  I lay groaning as a cover of blackness blotted out all light in my terrified eyes, and my mind slipped into the benighted abyss of unconsciousness and death.

How long I lay unconscious, I don’t know, but when I awoke, I was racked by agony such as I’ve never known.  Even simple body mechanics were now tortuous ordeals.  Not even when I threw off the monkey of heroin had I known such suffering. 

I prayed to the Almighty with each struggling step.  I was thankful to be alive, but then I heard a floorboard creak.  I spun around in the utmost agony expecting to be shot once again, perhaps repeatedly, and there was a startled black man old enough to be my father, standing over the corpse of Madam Claibornes’ slain bodyguard.  He sported thick tortoise shell frame glasses on a glabrous face with the deep brown complexion of an aged penny.  His trench coat was plain, and a gray felt hat protected his head from the cold. The old gent didn’t appear to be a criminal, but he held a gun pointed at me with a trembling hand. 

“Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! You can’t be alive!  You’re dead like Lazarus!  Dead like the witch!”  The old fellow ran from the house consumed with fear and panic.  His hat flew off his head in the process.  I shambled over to pick it up.  The initials S.L.G. were printed on the inside band.  A minute later, I heard a car crank, scratch off and speed away.  I had a hunch the old guy was driving the jalopy referred to by Yoyo.