Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

Junaid knelt down by them. “Is your phone working?” he said in a low voice.

“What do you mean?” Tabinda said.

“Is your damn phone working ? I can’t reach Mahmud.”

Tabinda flicked a peanut shell into the bowl and pulled her Nokia out. She peered at it, raised it high, and frowned. “That’s strange. I have no signal bars.”

“Me neither. I can’t reach anyone.”

“Weather, you think?”

Junaid lifted a hand and rubbed his cheek. “It’s not raining and there’s no storm.”

Tabinda’s eyes widened. “No!”

Junaid nodded miserably.

“What?” Noor said.

Junaid looked at Dara, who was quietly peeling nuts, and got up. Noor understood. Rubbing her hands together, she rose and followed him until they were a safe distance away.

“They blew up the signal towers,” Junaid said without preamble.

Noor stared at him. “What?”

Junaid bent his knee and placed a boot against the jagged edge of the house behind him. “Cellular base stations. The closest is in Dokri with a network of small booster towers along the way. I’ll bet you anything most of them are gone. Which means the fighting is closer than I thought.” He sagged a little. “We’re stuck here unless they send an air carrier. Or we can drive back.”

“You’re suggesting it?”

“No! We don’t know what’s going on out there. This place is safer at the moment.”

Noor opened her mouth, closed it. Her gaze went to the vast, empty buildings towering above her. It was quite dark now, the sun just a blood smear on the horizon, and the houses of Mohenjo-Daro pressed together. Broken platforms poked and plunged unevenly; black and formless holes gaped in the walls. Above, an icteric moon sat distorted by a low cloudbank, its light not a promise, but mere possibility.

“We’ve got to tell the kids now.”

“Yes.”

Noor shifted her weight; the icy evening wind cut through her kameez and woolen shawl. She shivered. Her abdomen tensed. She hadn’t begun bleeding yet, but she would soon.

“Let’s get it over with,” she said.

They returned to the bonfire. The cadets gathered around and listened to Junaid. Their faces were shocked and delighted by this new excitement. Spend the night in the ruins! Eagerly they asked how long the trouble would last.

“I don’t know yet.” Junaid shook his head. “We’ll just have to be patient.”

They left the boys chattering and walked to the bus where Hamid the bus driver was talking with the site watchman, a bald paunchy man with a pockmarked face. The watchman swept a hand toward the mounds and it triggered another round of debate between the two.

“What’s going on?” Noor said.

Hamid lifted his head. He was tall and very gangly, features chiseled and filed by many summers spent in this unforgiving land. He wore a khaddar chador around his shoulders in the fashion of northern Pashtuns. He stared at Noor through narrowed, kohl-lined eyes, then turned to Junaid and spoke rapidly in Sindi.

“What’s he saying?”

Junaid pressed his hands together. Slowly he began to crack his knuckles. “He says the watchman wants us to leave. He’s leaving as well and won’t be back for three days.”

The museum curator was right. The locals didn’t linger here on . . . what had Farooq said? The Day of the Goat. Noor looked at Tabinda who was studying the darkening sky.

“Why?”

“Superstition. They don’t like this place at night.”

The watchman muttered something and even in the moonlight Noor saw color drain from the bus driver’s face. He whispered to Junaid who spoke back angrily. Two cadets who’d followed them here giggled.

“Chario Hamid. Geedi Hamid,” they cried.

Noor knew geedi . They were calling him a coward. Hamid turned and yelled at them and they laughed and ambled away. Noor didn’t like the sound of that laughter; it had a tinge of hysteria about it. Hamid and the watchman stood together, shoulder to shoulder, their faces stubborn and scared.

“Maryal suyyji waya ahein ayyh raat,” said the watchman. Hamid flinched and began to murmur what sounded like a prayer.

“Will you please tell me what they’re saying?” Noor hissed at Junaid.

“Rubbish.” He pulled out his cellphone and looked at the corner of the screen and grimaced. “The dead swell here tonight,” he muttered. “What fucking nonsense.”

The cold was making Noor’s skin tingle. She glanced at Tabinda. She was looking away from the confrontation at the rows of dilapidated buildings ancient and silent on the plateau. Hamid said something and Junaid snapped at him. The driver threw up his hands. The watchman closed his fist and flung all his fingers out at Junaid, a gesture Noor understood without need for translation: go to hell. Then he turned and disappeared behind the mounds.

Hamid glared at the three of them, spat something out in Sindi and climbed into the bus. He turned the key and began to rev the accelerator.

“Is he leaving?” Noor said, alarmed.

Junaid’s face was furious and helpless. “Yes. He’ll leave without us if we don’t go now. We’ve got to gather everyone.”

The fire was guttering out when they got back to the boys. Burning wood crackled and orange flames edged with black turned the cadets’ faces sly and shadowy when Junaid announced they were leaving.

“We can’t go yet,” said one in a gruff voice, a freckled rat-faced boy named Tabrez whom Noor recognized as part of Abar’s posse. “We need to wait.”

“What do you mean?” Junaid said sharply. “Wait for whom?”

The boy popped a handful of roasted chickpeas into his mouth. Crunched them. “They said they had read about a secret room in the ruins. Went treasure hunting . . . Abar and Raheem.” Seeing Junaid’s aghast expression, he smiled sweetly and added: “Don’t worry. They have torches and shovels.”

A mile from the city proper, in a narrow ditch between two rocks, Noor undid her nala string, lowered the shalwar, and squatted. She put a hand between her legs, brought it out, and, stared at the viscous stain glisten in the flashlight’s glow.

Blood.

The smell was stronger than usual. Fishy. Perhaps it was the air down here. She wiped her hand carefully on the rock, leaving a handprint with beetles squirming in the digits, and let the flow abate. She finished up with paper napkins and bottled water, then rose and stood watching the dot of fire amidst the mounds, one finger scratching beneath her hijab.

She had shown Dara her scars, the raw pink-white ridges coiling serpentine around her collarbone and left shoulder. The thought filled her with amazement at her own daring. She’d never shown them to anyone, not even cheery, gentle Mark with whom she spent one night in Hanover before she left for Pakistan. Her lawyer had appealed for repatriation and to everyone’s surprise — most of all, her own — succeeded. She supposed it made sense. She’d never been charged and couldn’t just be guilty by association. Regardless, it was a frightening time, the last of her teenage years.

Mark. God, she hadn’t thought about him in a decade, although in the beginning he was all Noor could think about. They had met at rehab soon after they released her. She was required to attend weekly sessions while arrangements were made. Mark was bipolar. Noor was benighted by despair. Terrified of what her past held and what the future might bring. They had made love in darkness, his lips pressed to her neck, the comforting smells of his hair and his body and his seed caustic to her senses; and if he noticed the roughness of her flesh or was dismayed by how she sobbed afterwards, clutched her clothes, and fled never to return, well, he did not call to ask about it.