Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

“Looking forward to exploring the ruins, Miss Hamadani?” said Tabinda.

“Noor, please.”

“Noor. Sorry. At my age it’s difficult to discard old habits. I’m used to calling all these men by last name.”

“Creates that distance, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. Distance can be quite useful in this place,” Tabinda said, her eyes invisible from sun glare in her spectacles.

“When did you start working here?”

“Oh, about fifteen years ago.”

“The faculty didn’t . . . make you feel unwelcome?”

“Of course they did. That’s what men do. But I also try not to get in their way.”

The rebuke was subtle but unmistakable. Noor stared between the moss-covered trunks at the bus across the road. “What they were doing — it was wrong.”

“Bloodshed and sacrifice is a way of life here. Has been for centuries.”

“They don’t know any better,” Noor said. “I can’t stand the sight of blood, but that wasn’t why I stepped in. Teach kids to enjoy violence and they’ll carry that lesson to the grave.”

Tabinda laughed. The sound was deep-throated and made her jowls jiggle. “Half these cadets will be dead before they hit thirty. That’s the nature of their game. In their hearts they know it and it makes them arrogant.” She turned and walked toward the bus. She was agile for her age. Her voice carried back: “This has always been a land of heroes and monsters, Miss Hamdani. Here you pick your battles.”

A soft wind soughed through the spider cloud, making the dead shudder. Insect dust pattered down on Noor’s shoulders. She brushed it away. You’re wrong, she wanted to say. This is exactly how it begins. Hand them a weapon and tell them to man up and that’s the way to the mother lode of horror.

But of course she said nothing.

She had come upon them by accident the day before during her morning walk. The boy’s name was Abar and he was holding the trussed goat down with his knees digging into its well-fed side. Two other boys Noor didn’t know joined him, each squatting to hold the goat’s legs firmly. The animal — one of the beautiful tall Rajanpur breed with spotted ears and a milky body — bleated and thwacked its head on the bleached summer grass under the Kikar acacia. The sight made Noor’s blood pound and she found herself stomping toward the trio.

“Hey,” she called across the football field. “What do you think you’re doing?”

The two newcomers flinched as boys will on hearing a teacher’s voice and looked up. Abar just smiled and jerked the goat’s head back by the ears.

“Sir Junaid’s orders,” he yelled and positioned the slaughter knife across the animal’s throat. The blade glinted silver. It threw a dancing shadow across the green and Noor’s vision rippled. For a moment she didn’t know where she was, and anger swept over her.

“Put that goddamn knife down. Now!” She was only ten feet away and her voice boomed in the narrow grove of trees dividing the football and hockey grounds. The newcomers dropped the goat’s legs and sprinted away, but Abar didn’t move. He pressed the animal’s head down, an ugly grimace of anger and effort on his face.

“What’s the matter, Miss Hamdani?” Junaid had materialized from behind the grove of trees. In his hands he held half a dozen steel skewers, a chopping knife, and a cutting block. Without taking his eyes off Noor, he set these next to the acacia and mopped his brow dramatically. “How can we help you on this fine Eid day?”

“Did you ask the boys to do this?”

“Do what?”

“Slaughter animals on their own?”

He lifted his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Yes.”

“Why? Where’s the butcher?”

“Sick. Off duty. Does it matter? It’s sunnah to slaughter your own animals, isn’t it?” He grinned at her. He had what her dad used to call a copstash mustache: a thick wad of hair that bristled at either end. With his crew cut hair it made him look like a thug.

“Tell me again what the Prophet said about teaching mercy.”

He pointed at the bleating goat. “That is mutton. You eat it every day—”

“I’m vegan!”

“—and today’s Eid. Someone has to slaughter the animal to commemorate Ibraham’s gratitude to God for sparing his son’s life. It could’ve been Ismael under that knife. Then we’d all be in a boatload of trouble sacrificing our sons and all, wouldn’t we? All I’m doing is teaching our glorious cadets to do it themselves. Very important, learning to steel your heart.”

She wanted to punch him. “They’re kids! They need to learn kindness before cruelty.”

His eyes were chips of hot mica. “Not my cadets. Not in these times. And this is not cruelty.” He placed the skewers crisscross on the wooden block. “It’s necessity.”

Helpless, Noor glanced at Abar. The boy was smiling, a cold twisting sneer that was frighteningly familiar. The feeling of unreality, of red-hot memory, resurged. Noor turned and strode away, blinking away the warmth in her eyes. Behind her rose the chant “In the name of God . . .” and the animal was screaming, a loud gargling sound. If she kept walking, Noor thought, she could outpace the sound. Walk away before steam rises from the animal’s throat in the winter air, before the red curtain drops in front of her eyes and the strange staring faces emerge . . . one of which will be Muneer’s. Always his.

As she fled, the sound was cut off suddenly.

Then there was chopping.

Through a thicket of trees they trundled into the low-lying areas of Mohenjo-Daro. The Sind River curled a blue finger around the plateau in the distance. Tabinda pointed out dull squat structures that formed the mounds on the ruins’ outskirts.

“Pariahs lived in some of these,” she said.

The museum at Mohenjo-Daro was a solid red brick building with life-sized bronze replicas of ancient relics flanking its entrance. Two hundred meters away in the desolate sprawl of the ruins the Buddhist stupa rose from the giant mound like a skin-colored tumor. Junaid and Tabinda disembarked to set up a picnic lunch, leaving Noor and the cadets to hurry into the museum.

“Had you come in spring,” said the curator, “it would’ve taken you eight hours to get here from the college. You chose wisely. But, still, this late?”

Noor fingered the seated Priest-King statuette the curator had been showing the class, a tiny resin replica with pressed lips, closed eyes, and a gouged nose. A crack ran down its forehead to the left cheek. “Why? What happens in spring?”

The curator glanced at the wall clock. It was quarter past eleven. He scratched the crab-shaped mole on his cheek. “The Sarwar Fair. Hundreds of pilgrims from villages all over the Indus Valley converge on the saint’s tomb in the Baluchistan hills. They travel by foot and donkey carts and often clog up the roads all the way from Dadu to Sukkar. The soil of Sind is filled with miracles and magic.” His gaze didn’t leave the clock.

Noor placed the resin figure back on the counter. “What time does the museum close?”

The man sighed. He was short and swarthy, dressed in a checkered ajrak shirt, white shalwar, and an embroidered Sindi cap. His nametag said Farooq. As he looked at the mass of teenage boys loitering about the lobby, distaste crept into his face. “Now.”

“It’s not even noon.”

“It’s Eid. We’re usually closed for the holidays. I made an exception for the cadet college because I was told we’d be done by ten.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know what to say. They had been delayed at a military checkpoint in Dadu. Apparently a suicide blast had occurred at a small mosque in the outskirts of Khairpur, killing an elderly woman and her two grandchildren. The area was flooded by police and army personnel; checkpoints had been established at various junctures from Larkana all the way to their college at Petaro. The military was worried about a follow-up attack. Junaid said he wasn’t surprised. Most terrorist attacks happened in double strikes, a well-known MO used by the Taliban as well as the CIA (where they used drones for warfare).