Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

He looked at her with a cocked eyebrow. “Lady, you’re not from Sind, are you?”

“Not a difficult observation, I guess, but why do you say that?”

“A local wouldn’t ask me that question.” His gaze went over her shoulder. Past the verdigris-laced brass statue of the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro with an emaciated hand on her hip at the entrance, across the rocky slope. He stared at the citadel mound visible from the museum steps. “What does it matter? I’ll tell you two things,” he said, lowering his voice. “First: on the Day of the Goat, no one from Larkana district will stay in these ruins past dusk. Not even the watchman.”

“The Day of the Goat?”

“Second—” His eyes gleamed in the doorway. Incessantly he picked at his mole until a drop of blood appeared below its twisted, spidery shape. “Why don’t you ask Ms. Tabinda about devil glass? Ask her why she and her crew stopped the restoration dig here in 2001.”

“What?” Noor stared at him, but he was already stepping back in, slamming the door, slipping the bolts, and she was left on the doorstep with her cadets milling noisily about her.

They dipped sheermal in chicken-and-lentil soup and chased it down with yogurt lassi. Junaid described the strategic importance of the site’s location near a body of water, but no one was interested. The cadets were restless; they wanted to explore. Noor’s eyes were riveted on Tabinda who was quietly munching a piece of bread, her gaze never far from the ruins.

A cold wind followed them up the dusty gravel path winding between the citadel mound and lower town. Two miles west of the citadel was lush farmland. Odd that no human dots speckled the furrowed fields. They hadn’t seen any ox carts, motor bikes, or bicycles on the road leading into the city either. Noor assumed the laborers and farmhands had taken the day off for Eid. Her belly had settled and she felt more cheerful.

The farmland was separated from the salty sediment of the ruins by a levee. Tabinda said this was reinforced every year to help control the annual flooding.

“Not that it always works. Last year heavy floods topped the levees and brought the white crab spiders out.” She smiled. “The locals fear those spider trees, let me tell you. They think them a terrible omen.”

“Omen? Of what?”

“Apparently there’s a folktale about demon cattle that feed on the leaves of such trees. Some time ago Karachi University published a survey showing that in certain years coinciding with old Sindi lunar calendars, animal sacrifice activity intensifies in this region.” Tabinda rubbed her knuckles. “The fact that the floods nearly destroyed the site last year doesn’t help ease their minds about evil forewarnings.”

She was correct about the damage. By now the city proper had closed around them like a bony fist and the narrow alley they walked was flanked by massive crumbling buildings topped with mud slurry for preservation. Windows gaped in the brick houses laid in a perfect grid. Some houses with exterior staircases that led to the second floor had chipped and eroded steps. The city’s smell hit Noor — salinity and dust, floodwater and age — and for a moment she felt as if she were falling, collapsing inside a claustrophobic funnel down into nothing. The feeling passed, leaving her slightly dizzy.

The cadets began to meander. A few headed to the alley leading up to the citadel mound. Noor let Junaid uselessly attempt to herd them together and strode to catch up with the elderly professor walking briskly as ever.

“You didn’t tell me you used to be an archaeologist,” she said.

Tabinda frowned. She was holding a palm against her mouth, two fingers pinching her nostrils. The edges of her eyelids behind her spectacles were pink. “I hate this weather. Winter brings out all my allergies.” She sneezed and rubbed her nose. “I’m not an archaeologist. I assume Farooq told you something. The man couldn’t keep his mouth shut if you sealed it with mortar.”

She went up a stone staircase and lowered herself onto a platform jutting from the roof. Noor sat down beside her.

“He said you were involved with a dig here.”

“Yes. As consultant anthropologist. Greg Fossel and I were working on restoring parts of the site’s drainage system. You’d be surprised how extensive it was. One wondered why they went to such lengths for a city this small.” She dangled her legs back and forth, her face thoughtful. “Then again, most of it remains underground according to sonar sweeping.”

“Why’d you stop?”

Tabinda patted the edge of the platform. “Circumstances.”

Together they gazed at the ruins sprawling around them. In the lower part of the city between copses of trees and rocks was more evidence of water damage: caving walls, piles of broken masonry, weathered facades. Here and there the rubble twinkled.

Noor said, “What did Farooq mean about devil glass?”

The professor’s black eyes were glazed and inward. “Vitrified pottery of course. Sediment and relics turned to ceramic glass by extreme temperatures.”

“I don’t understand.”

Tabinda laughed. The sound echoed in the alleys, as if it came from within the ruins. “Why would you want to? It’s only of interest to old farts like me.” She rose and made her way to the staircase.

“Why did he call it devil glass?”

Tabinda stood at the top step, her silhouette dark and bloated against the sun. She seemed to be transfixed by the ruins again. Behind her the stupa and the citadel mound thrust against a desolate winter sky empty of birds.

“When the site was first discovered,” she said in a flat voice, “the excavators found piles of glass spherules and silica chunks like those found in Libya and the Sahara. In some places large craters were present. It was assumed that either meteor impact or plasma discharges from lightning had melted the minerals. Fused soil into glass. None of which, of course, explains the hundreds of human skeletons lying bleached in the streets and alleys on top of the glass heaps.”

“What?” Noor pushed herself up from the edge. Two streets away one of the cadets was pissing in the shadow of the ancient wall, his shalwar pooled around his ankles. She couldn’t tell who. She wanted to yell at him, but the urge was gone as suddenly as it had come. “God. What killed them?”

“Who knows?” Tabinda turned to face her. She shrugged, but did something flicker in the dark of her eyes? Noor couldn’t be sure. “Carbon dating approximated it happened around the same time the site was abandoned. The city didn’t recover from the catastrophe. Whoever killed those people killed the entire civilization.”

A gust of wind swept Noor’s hijab back and she stepped away from the platform, chilled and uneasy. Tabinda’s fists were clenched by her sides.

She said whoever, not whatever , Noor thought.

“What happened here in 2001? Come on. You obviously have bad memories.”

“We lost three men. All superstitious laborers. One went mad and threw himself off the top of the citadel, smashing his head on the rocks. He was already disturbed, we were told. Another just disappeared. The third tried to kill Fossel and was shot and killed by one of the watchmen.” Tabinda shivered. “It was a dark year. And I had such nightmares.”

She gave Noor a tired smile. For the first time Noor noticed a mild droop to the left of her face. An old stroke or nerve palsy? The crease of flesh between her nose and lips was flat.

“So I left. Went back to Petaro. Rejoined the cadet college. I haven’t looked back since.” Tabinda pushed her spectacles up her nose, squinted, then pointed with a pudgy finger. Junaid was walking toward them, waving both hands. His arms looked strange and loose from up here, kameez sleeves ballooning and fluttering like desert birds.