Dark Tales Of Lost Civilizations (8 page)

Clayton smacked Lyddy on the neck with the leg bone. Lyddy fell.

Clayton threw away the club. He stooped to retrieve the lantern, still lit.

The old double-cross
, Lyddy tried to say. It came out as a sigh. He lay stunned and immobile.

“I imagine the story of this place was scrambled as it moved north, all the way from here to Dakota,” said Clayton.

The Indians brought gold and skins and what-not to the hole in the hill,
thought Lyddy.
In exchange, the serpent brothers gave medicine to their kinsmen to help in their battles.

“Yessir. And the snake medicine was making extra warriors. The Cliff Dwellers must have built this place for the new people to live in. Though they weren’t people exactly.” Clayton walked over to the ladder well. “But that’s a lot of mouths to feed—especially if the new ones don’t like corn pone. So it went to pieces.”

The Indians built high to get away from the ground. Snakes live on the ground. Or under it.

“So many people you could have been,” Clayton said. “Instead you got stuck on gold.”

Maybe there never were four brothers in the story. Maybe there was just the one to start.

“I presume you’re correct,” said Clayton. His voice echoed in the vertical tunnel, the pool of light diminishing as he descended. “Now I’m gonna go see how old Jenny Allen’s getting along.”

If she would’ve married me poor, she’ll sure marry you rich.

“Ha!” Clayton whooped. “So many decisions to make, so many opportunities.” He sounded far away. “So many different people I could be. Have fun, Shorty!”

“Mmhphgr,” said Shorty. Somehow he had disarticulated his jaw and swallowed Lyddy up to the waist.

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Jackson Kuhl
is the author of
Samuel Smedley, Connecticut Privateer
(The History Press, 2011). His website is
www.jacksonkuhl.com
.

Michael G. Cornelius

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The following story is another that, the moment I read it, I knew right away I had to have it. It really pushes the boundaries of what I was visualizing to be included in this anthology, and it just fits so perfectly. The lost civilization in this next tale is one that is long beloved in our imaginations and has been popularized in modern culture the world over. In this account, Michael G. Cornelius explores the lives of four sisters, each a unique voice, as they lament their mortality in the lost and wonderful land of . . . Oz.

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West

It wasn’t a schoolgirl.

That’s not how I pictured my death.

My delicious evil deserved far better than to perish at the hands of a raw-boned, wastrel youth from Kansas. Kansas! How ignoble that I, terror of the Winkie clan, scourge of all western Oz, should be reduced to oblivion by the cursory actions of a mere child, a slip of a girl in blue calico and pig tails. Pig tails! My murky beauty outshone everything about that girl, and still I fell before her.

No, that wasn’t supposed to be my end! I was destined for greater infamy. In my mind’s eye, my end came only at his hands; only the Wizard was wild enough to destroy me. But only at the end of a terrible battle, and only at some great, Pyrrhic cost. I may finally be defeated, but I would make sure all of Oz would live to regret it.

I saw that final battle every night in my dreams; every night when I lay down on my straw-filled mat, my soul swam with images of the carnage and destruction I would wrought. My flying monkeys and Winkie army would descend upon the Emerald City like a horde of black locusts, destroying and devouring everything in their path. They had been trained for this moment, to think of nothing save devastation, to care not for their own lives but only for the glorious rancor of annihilation. And there, in the midst of broken wings and oozing pustules of green, rent flesh being torn and tasted by crows, stood he, the Wizard, half-walking, half-floating through the carnage, calling me out by name. Finally I would have broken through that placid demeanor, pierced the mask of civility, to the true man underneath! His anguish fed the recess of my soul which, until that very moment, had always hungered, always pained for such rich nourishment. How I loved the clarity of his rage, the sweet tenderness of his fury! Crying, he would call me forth, summon me from my lurking shadow, and I would appear, all in black save the few drips of spent blood that splattered my misshapen face. I would smile, and bow, not forgetting the old courtesies before a wizard’s duel. And our match—legends would be writ of it for centuries to come! Songs would be sung, stories told, a stone monument built to the devastation we would cause! I would face him, and in the pit of my stomach, I would feel a new sensation, something I had never known before. A quivering in the pit of my belly, a quavering, a new sensation, something entirely foreign to me—

Fear.

For the first time, for the only time, fear. I would tremble, shake, and relish the moment, this moment, my last moment on this earth. Then the duel would begin. My greatest magics I would call upon—dark spells that I had preserved for this very instance. Each of us would rise to new heights of power, our conflict a lover’s dance, intimate, he and I, side by side, face to face, as we parried and thrust, as we wounded and bled. I know I would ultimately lose—I must, he is the Wizard of Oz—but my story would be ended that day, ended as it should be, as all evil must be ended. In glorious, savage defeat. He would emerge bloodied, hardened, victorious, but lamenting his costly victory. He would curse my name, scorch the very earth where I now lay crumpled with his vast powers. He would be exalted for all time; and I, reviled. But we would be remembered, the two us, forever locked in combat, forever locked in a bloody, awful embrace.

In the moment I awoke every night from this dream, this beautiful dream, I would gasp, then catch my breath with surprise that I was indeed still alive, still whole. Then I would remember that it was, still, just a dream—that it had not yet come to pass. I slept well on those dreams, relishing my continuing nightmare. In those minutes after I woke, as I lay in my bed feeling the coolness of the rock beneath the straw that supported my body, I wondered what he would do with my broken, bent corpse. Would he avenge himself further? Use his powers to blast me from all recognition? Or would he prefer a more visceral revenge? Would he take a woodsman’s axe and tear my arms and legs from me, scattering bone and flesh and sinew, ordering that each vile limb be taken to some remote corner of Oz, the locations never to be revealed, lest some dark magic revive my bones and return me to this plane of existence? Or would he, in his infinite power and sagacity, mourn me, bow his head over my body in sympathy for what might have been, for what might have become of me—of us—had I chosen to use my powers more wisely, more judiciously, more as he has? Oh yes, I could see that, see the great and powerful Oz shed a tear over my passage, even as he stood amongst the hundreds and hundreds of dead bodies my rancor had created. And I hated him for it, hated the very thought of it. I prefer to picture him as I like him best, his visage crossed with such deep anger, splattered with the green blood of my fallen body, grabbing at my haunch to tear my leg from my torso. His hair is matted with my gore, but his fury is such that he barely notices; one last indignity, and he spits at me, spits into the crushed canyon of my face, and watches as his spittle mingles with my blood and creeps slowly down my countenance, following the trail my tears would go if I were capable of expressing such thoughts or feelings. Oh yes, the irony of that ending, of my blood tears as my dead form cried over what I myself had wrought with girlish, impish glee. That pleased me. That gave me hope. That was how I was to die.

Not like this. Not through
her
. Where is he? In my last moments as I leave this world, as my hopes and ambitions and beautiful evil melt away, where is he, where is my Wizard, come for his revenge at last? Only he can kill me; only he can be the cause of my destruction. This is not my story; this is not my end. The cruelty of this moment, the reckless loss of life she has spared through her actions . . . what a world.

What a world.

North

It wasn’t sweetness.

That’s not how I pictured my death.

Truth be told, I never had a stock answer for my end. I pictured it, yes, but in a hundred different ways, in a hundred different times. I was old, that I knew, old but not enfeebled. I was still radiant, still beautiful, my hair still shone, my breasts still heaved, my smile still expressed the benevolent power of my heart. There was still time for accolades; still time for parades; time for mercies and gratitude and time for me. Time to sleep, time to rest, time to be alone with this world. But that time has slipped on by, so fast, so fast, and now I find myself here at the end, and I wonder where it has all gone, where it all went.

It all started off with such promise. I was beloved, a vision in white and gold, luminescent even against the sunniest of skies. I was the breath of stale air everyone needed, the voice who always said what everyone wanted to hear, no surprises, no missed expectations, just the same, stale, saccharine goodness everyone wanted from me. I wasn’t mercurial, aloof, tempestuous like my sisters; I wasn’t—well—a
witch
. I was me, or better yet, me to the tenth power, smiling, always smiling, always happy, always pleasing everyone, always sensible. The Good One. That’s what they called me. The Good Witch of the North. As if to be Good was simple, was natural, as if to be always Good, always mild and always pleasant, always just too-darn-nice, was easy. And the sad truth is, it is. It is easy, it is simple, if you don’t mind being phony, being plastic, being a cookie-cutter vision in white crinoline and chiffon frosting swirls. It is easy to be perfect, as long as you don’t mind not being yourself anymore.

And I didn’t mind. Really. I was loved. Beloved. What need had I for freedom? I had bliss. Bliss, I thought, is better. And so I came when they called. I kissed foreheads, I smiled benevolently, I bestowed luck and good tidings. I came to bless the births of every child in Oz; came to toast the retirement of grand ladies and gentlemen; came to celebrate the opening of a new Munchkin bakery or shoe repair shop. I came to their parties, I came to their parades, I came to their celebrations, always smiling, always waving. They expected me to come; they depended upon it. And so I came.

And sometimes, sometimes, in the lull of a celebration, in a quiet moment between an Ozian minuet, or before the main course was served, someone, some small person, would turn to me, and in a quiet and always respectful voice, ask me, “Dear Good Witch of the North,” (for, indeed, they always referred to me as a Good Witch,) “dear Good Witch of the North, could you please, pretty please, rid us of our evil tormentor, the Wicked Witch of the East?” And then, batting at me with coy and hopeful eyes, the same small person always added one last “Please?,” more a hope than a request, as if that was the reason I had done so little to help them before, as if the reason I had done nothing to alleviate their suffering and their torment was that this one, small person had not said “please” to me already a dozen hundred times before.

And what do I do, when some small person asks me this? I smile. I smile as benevolently and sweetly and kindly as I can, because I know that that smile is the only help I can give. I cannot explain to them the diminutive power of sweetness, the relative feebleness of kindness; nor could I tell them the formidable power of my evil sisters, who reign over me with appalling ease. I could not tell them that kindness only has power in the hearts of good men and women, and every child in Oz; kindness was light and truth and honesty and honor and square dealings with kith and kin and stranger alike. Kindness was all I had to give; and they took it, took it wrapped up in a pretty pink bow and a sugary smile, a helpful spoonful of sucrose to ease the passage of the vile cod liver that was always sure to follow. But my kindness was nothing compared to the power each of my sisters wielded. They who knew no kindness and possessed strength far greater than I; they who depended on no one, who cared not to be loved, who had no need to be so needed, they had true strength. I could not explain to these small people that I was powerless against them; that my ministrations did no real good. Oh, I had my tricks; I offered my protection, and my sisters, perhaps out of some sympathy deep in their black hearts, they let that pass. But my starlit wand knew no true magic; it knew nothing of transfiguration or transubstantiation. Why else must I be kind? I want to explain it to them; I want to grab their small necks and shake and squeeze so hard they gasp for air, they choke, feel as constricted as I feel day in and day out, constricted with kindness and goodness and sweetness and caring and understanding. I wanted to wring their small necks and explain to them the true power of the witches of Oz. But I couldn’t do that; I needed them as much as they needed me. And so I only smiled. Pat their little small heads and tell them I shall do the best I can. Let them think the fault lies within them, that they did not ask kindly enough, or sweetly enough. Let them blame themselves. For they cannot blame me. Then no power would I have at all.