Dark Tales Of Lost Civilizations by Eric J. Guignard (Editor) Read Free Book Online Page A

lever.
    “You’ll stop in your tracks or I’ll blast you,” said Lyddy.
    The other man halted. “Easy,” he said, holding up his hands. “I don’t mean nothing.”
    Identical, clothes and all. Only minus the mustache and beard, as if fresh from the barber. Just like the last one.
    “Who are you?” Lyddy said fierce. “Where did you come from?”
    “Just now?” He rubbed his neck. “From one of the cellars. You know, those rooms where the only way out is a ladder.”
    Lyddy shook the carbine. “I’m not crazy. You’re real . Now tell me where you come from.”
    The other man shook his head, baffled. “Same place as anybody, I suppose—from my mother.” He looked sideways, overhead, all around. “It’s like I was asleep and just woke up.”
    There was a bottle of rye in the saddlebag. Lyddy fished it out single-handed. Poured half down his throat.
    Wherever the stranger came from, he wasn’t lying. Lyddy felt that. And he did act groggy, as if he rolled off a cot moments before.
    Certainly didn’t seem dangerous. More dazed than anything.
    Several items occurred to Lyddy in quick succession. Lyddy was the only one of the pair who possessed a firearm. If there was one statuette down there, there were bound to be more. Gold is heavy. They were miles away from anybody else.
    Lyddy lowered the muzzle.
    “There’s gold down below,” said Lyddy. “You help me carry it up to the surface, we can split it fifty-fifty.”
    The man scratched his cheeks where a beard should have been. Wobbled on his feet. “That sounds fair,” he said.
    Lyddy nodded, slung the Winchester over his shoulder. “Good. Now what should I call you?”
    “My name is Tobias Clayton Lyddy.”
    “That’s my name,” said Lyddy.
    “It’s the only name I know. Don’t I have just as much right to it?”
    Lyddy considered. “I’ll call you Clayton.”
    This cheered the other man. “And I’ll call you Toby.”
    “No,” said Lyddy, “You’ll call me Mister Lyddy.”
    Come sunset, Lyddy and Clayton chewed their beans and bacon, facing each other across the campfire. Lyddy sat with his back to a scarp of red sandstone, the carbine across his lap. Clayton chattered away, talking fluff, telling stories Lyddy already knew. Lyddy grunted at intervals.
    Flakes of ash and sparks rose into the night sky and Lyddy wondered, Had there even been another man besides this one ? Yes, he decided, there had been—and moreover, Lyddy had cut him dead. But the features couldn’t have been his. He had gone a little crazy, his eyes playing tricks on him. In the bouncing firelight, he wasn’t even sure Clayton was the same as him.
    “I wonder what would’ve happened if I had married Jenny Allen,” said Clayton. “She sure had peepers for me.”
    The statement arrived out of nowhere. “She wanted to marry me ,” said Lyddy. “You weren’t there.”
    “Sure, sure.” Clayton stared at the stars, smiling. Remembering? “How many kids you think you’d have by now if you had married her?”
    Lyddy said, “I haven’t thought two seconds about Jenny Allen in years.” Which was a fib.
    If he had been deceived by the man’s face then he could have been deceived by the gold too. Maybe it wasn’t a golden kachina he had found—maybe it was made of pyrite. Or maybe he had never seen anything at all. What was real and what were tricks?
    No. Lyddy didn’t like that. The gold was real so the faces of Clayton and the other man were real too. Whatever Lyddy saw was part and parcel with the place. Some strange Indian medicine. If he wanted the one thing, he had to accept the other.
    If he wanted the gold.
    Lyddy slept rough that night, dozing every few minutes before jarring awake, but by the time the eastern sky was smeared pink and purple, he had a notion. He and Clayton would return to the chamber, grab the statue, and search for others. There had to be others. When they had loaded as much as Lyddy’s two animals could carry—Lyddy would walk,