Chapter #23A Gleam in the Eye by: Seuzz   The desert air shimmers. It shakes and wavers and trembles; it gleams like a thin but molten ether.
You've got lots of time to study the desert air and the desert light -- the light that sears and saturates the Nevada landscape, that slices at your eyes like a razorblade -- as you race along at ninety miles an hour. The hot, black ribbon of highway smokes under the summer sun and flashes blue puddles of sky at you. But the whole landscape might be a mirage: ridges of baked sand and stubby basalt hills that could be a hundred yards or a hundred miles away. You drain your Coke, which you thought would last until the next gas stop, and snort at your optimism. It'll be another hundred miles before you have a chance at another refreshment.
Or so you think. Twenty miles later you slow to fifty-five as a dirty white building looms up your right. Another mirage? An abandoned shack? You slow to thirty and crane your neck as you pass it. There's a new car parked beside it, so maybe it's a going concern. There's no traffic in sight -- you've passed only one other vehicle since noon -- so you make a U-turn in the middle of the highway and circle back.
It would look like a ranch house, one plucked up by a cyclone and dropped hundreds of miles away in the desert, but for the faded advertisements painted on its blistered walls. Bogannons, says the one on the big sign over the porch. You shift into the weathered face of one of your military veterans and settle a battered Stetson on your head as you get out.
It's hot inside the store, and the three industrial-sized floor fans only drone at the air instead of cooling it. The floor sags and the half-empty shelves sag, and the refrigerated chest in the corner wheezes noisily. But not everything in the store is ancient: there's an e-reader in the hand of the man squatting on a stool beside the mechanical cash register. He looks up at you from under his brows.
He has a large head with a strong brow, from which a thin wash of black hair sweeps straight back. His eyes are intelligent, and when he stands he holds himself erect with a lifted chin. But his dress is shabby -- dirty slacks and a sweat-stained undershirt -- and his cheeks and chin are covered in a salt-and-pepper stubble.
Well, appearances probably don't count for much out here.
You tap a knuckle on a shelf that is gray with age. "I was afraid this place might be a mirage."
The proprietor smiles faintly.
"I've seen many mirages, sir," he says. Both his courtesy and his well-spoken words would surprise you if it weren't for the clarity of his eyes and the breadth of his brow. "And I've seen many things that weren't," he continues, "and many things that ought to have been, even though they weren't. I've seen the sky smeared across the sand, and I've seen tractor trailers churning through the clouds. I've seen dancing lights in the night sky, and heard thunder when there was no storm. And once I saw a line of Shoshone warriors gallop before my very store, making no stir and leaving no print. But if this establishment is a mirage," he concludes, "it is a most persistent one."
"Uh huh." You're not sure what to make of this speech. "You have anything cold to drink?"
"Colas and beers." He points to the refrigerated chest. You slide open the top and study the selection: "Coke and Coors," he might as well have said, for that's all he stocks. You take three of the former up to the register.
"You probably don't get much trade," you observe as you take out your wallet.
"That's another illusion," he says. "My emporium, as it happens, is an outpost of Alkali Flats, a community of some hundred souls spread across this side of the highway. And few travelers can pass without stopping. I'm often accused of being a mirage," he adds dryly.
Then he cocks his head and looks over your shoulder. His face tightens. "And then there are strangers who refuse to remain strangers," he says in a low voice.
You turn as his door opens. Two men enter. Something in their demeanor gives you a chill -- a chill that is not a relief from the baking heat.
Both are dressed in camo gear -- jungle green, not desert tan -- and both are gaunt and haggard. One's head is shaved, and the dome glows redly from sunburn, and his face is withered so that his eyes stare out of large sockets, and bony teeth push his lips outward. The other shows his thinness in his chest and the skinny arms sticking out of rolled-up sleeves; his face he hides in a bristling black beard that almost merges with his caterpillar-like eyebrows. Black hair sticks out from under his green cap.
"You have a visitor, Doc," says this latter one. Like his friend, he regards you with a direct and glittering eye. "Were you going to call us?"
"A customer," says the proprietor. His voice quavers. "Only stopping for a refreshment."
"Then it's lucky we were camping nearby. We have an opportunity for him. The Great Chance. Friend," the bearded one says as he grasps your elbow. "You will not pass this way again. You would not spend the balance of your days in regret at not taking it, would you?"
"What are you talking about?" That light in his eye -- you've seen it in others' eyes, and it's never boded good.
"Riches greater than you can conceive."
"If it's money the gentleman wants, he should take his change," says the proprietor. He pulls you to the counter and presses coins into your palm. He says nothing, but the hiss between his teeth and the horror in his eyes are warning enough.
That's decides you to go with the two lunatics. It's obvious they've been frightening the locals, and probably worse. But you're not afraid, only curious about the shape of the forthcoming adventure.
"It is a great labor, one that will tax you, may even destroy you," says the bearded one as they lead you across the highway and over the hump of a small hill. "But what great reward is not worth great labor?" Still he doesn't explain what he means, but guides you to two large motorcycles, one of which has a sidecar. He puts you in it, and your trio roars onto the highway.
Five miles or so you go, then turn onto a dirt road. You bump along this for another dozen miles, skirting hills and arroyos, until you enter a small canyon. There you dismount.
Hundreds of yards your trio hikes, over tawny rock and dirt, until you come to the bleak end of the crevasse, and clamber up a steep slope. Halfway up is a shelf of stone, and that's where you stop. There's a crack here in the rock wall.
Inside that crack reclines a bleached and dusty skeleton.
Your trio regards it silently for a moment before anyone speaks. "Yes, it is he," says the bearded one. "Midas of the Golden Touch."
"Really," you say. This was nothing like the climax you imagined. "Never heard he immigrated. How'd he get here?"
"The fleets of Phoenicia bore him." Neither the bearded speaker nor his sunburned friend -- who has remained completely silent -- looks like a learned man, so you're puzzled that he knows the name. "Through the Pillars of Hercules and across the Western Ocean he came. To Brazil and up the mighty Amazon he went, spilling gold from his fingertips and creating the land of El Dorado. Into the Andes, where he made the gold of the Incas, and Mexico, where he enriched the Aztecs. He spent himself finally in the deserts of Sonora, having founded the seven Golden Cities of Cibola."
He grasps your arm. "The gold still seeps from his bones. See how the rock of this canyon gleams?"
"Oh. Sure." The desert sun has tanned the rock. "So why don't you dig it up, make yourselves rich?"
Their faces grow mournful. "It is too much for us. Laborers and partners we need."
The sunburned one pulls a pick-axe from the crevasse. "Here," he croaks. "You get to keep ten percent of what you dig."
"And you keep the other ninety? That's generous."
The two men exchange a long look. "He wants more," says the bearded one. "Like the others," says his friend. "He will cheat us." "Like the others." "He will steal the gold and replace it with worthless rock." "He'll run off, come back with some of his own friends." They nod. "We must do unto him before he does unto us," says the bearded one. "Like the others," says the other hoarsely. He raises the pick-axe over his head to strike you.
But he freezes and blinks. In the moment they were distracted, you'd slipped your cloak over them. With a burning sigil in your fingertip, you put them both to sleep.
As you lay them in the dirt, a gleam flickers across the face of the skull. You stare at it a moment, then quickly look away.
* * * * *
Cell reception is surprisingly good at Bogannons, so you've no trouble calling Joe. "Best I can say is it sounds like an aarnivalkea," he says after calling you back with his quick-and-dirty research. "Can you drive your guys up to Olympia, meet me there? It has to be dug out of its victims' eyes."
"Sure, you're the boy for it." Your assailants are already bundled into your car -- the end of a long, sweaty labor. "What exactly is a -- What you said?"
"A kind of will-o-the-wisp, one especially associated with faerie gold." Joe clucks his tongue. "Funny place to run across one."
"You wouldn't say that if you saw this place. You'd believe almost anything you saw out here."
You stare at the hills and the sky beyond. The light slices at your eyeballs like a razor blade. The desert air shimmers.
To wake from this reverie: "The Boy from Before Everything, Part 2"    indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
| Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author