Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

The night wind gusted, making Noor shiver. She patted her hijab, tucked her kameez into place, and walked back to rejoin the group huddling by the fire.

Junaid crouched on his haunches. He held a lighter in one hand and a newspaper roll in the other. He clicked the wheel and a flame sprouted between his fingers. A red-hot tongue of fire whooshed to life and began to devour the paper.

“Did you find them?” Noor said.

He shook his head. “It’s a big place. They could be hiding anywhere. Although, when I do,” he gritted his teeth, thrust the burning roll into the dwindling flames, and stirred the cinders with a twig. “I’ll beat them to a pulp, I swear.” The fire shuddered in his eyes.

They had reached a compromise with Hamid: he would leave the bus behind, in case it turned freezing cold, and hitch a ride with the watchman to Baner, the nearest town. There, he’d try to contact and update Colonel Mahmud on their situation as well as find out details of the confrontation between the military and the militants.

“I really wish you would all come with me,” he had told Junaid in Sindi before hopping on the bike, but that was impossible. Abar and Raheem were still missing.

“Mr. Junaid,” one of the cadets said. “May we have some more sheermal? We’re hungry.”

“In a bit,” he said, then whispered to Tabinda, “How much food is left?”

“Another meal. Maybe two if we’re stingy. We didn’t prepare for this.” She raised her palms to the fire, then shouted, “Who wants to tell ghost stories?”

“Me,” called someone, and another muttered, “Dork.”

They told stories. Gathered around the flames, ignoring the thrumming black, cold licking their flesh, they gushed out tall tales that became stranger and stranger:

A silent ugly schoolboy bullied by his classmates is wrestled and stripped and thrown to the ground. He turns into a horned beetle, burrows into the earth. Returns night after night as a monstrous insect with a boy’s face peering into his tormentors’ windows, tapping and chirping, until they go mad from lack of sleep.

A man on a lonely mountain road comes upon a goat, decides to steal it and carry it home — only to find the animal growing heavy on his back, its limbs elongating, cleft hooves dropping until they dangle an inch above the ground. The thief throws the animal off and flees, and monstrous laughter chases him all the way home.

The soot-covered raven man flitting from tree to tree in a Hindu cremation ground.

The pregnant woman in the bushes with snake tresses and backward feet.

A knot of wood exploded in the fire and an ember landed between Noor’s legs, startling her. She toed it out with her sneaker, shook the stiffness from her back. She opened her mouth to ask if anyone wanted another blanket. “I know a good one,” she said instead, and blinked with surprise.

They turned, fire-lit faces pale and somber. Eyes rheumy from smoke and ash stared at her.

“My mother was a teacher at an Ashkenazi Jewish center in America,” she said. Her pulse was pounding in her throat. “She told me the story of the Sent Goat. It scared me witless as a child. Have you heard it?”

They shook their head.

“In the old days, the Israelites performed a rite called the se’ir mishtale’ach on the Day of Atonement. Two goats were selected in a ceremony. Healthy, unblemished specimens. Lots were drawn over them: on one was written ‘Lord’, on the other ‘Azazel.’ The goat whose lot drew ‘Lord’ was slaughtered immediately as redemption for the nation’s crimes that year. The other . . .” She looked around the campfire, at their reddened, glassy eyes and quivering mouths. “Anyone know what Azazel means?”

“Yes,” Tabinda murmured. She was sitting next to Noor, her hands knotted together in her lap. “A demon of the wilderness.”

“That’s correct.” Noor nodded. “The second goat was sent into the desert, supposedly laden with the sins of Israel, to Azazel the wild demon, the pagan god, waiting to devour it. Azazel also translates as ‘the goat that departs.’ The word scapegoat in English comes from that.” She smiled bitterly. “The animal sacrifice and exile were symbolic of what might happen to an unrepentant tribesman. This was how they made themselves feel better.”

The cadets’ faces were masks dappled orange and black. They watched Noor with unflinching eyes. The freckled boy, Tabrez, leaned and whispered in his neighbor’s ear and they both giggled.

“That’s a horrible story,” Junaid said. His teeth gleamed in the firelight like a serrated knife. “I didn’t know you were so twisted, Miss Hamadani.”

He wet his lips and grinned. His hand moved slowly to his lap. Was he turned on? Oddly she didn’t feel repulsed, just frigid and tired, and grateful when Dara got up and brought more tinder.

Tabrez whined for dinner and Tabinda handed out four foil-wrapped packets of sheermal. They disappeared quickly. Someone wondered why Abar and Raheem weren’t back; perhaps a small group could go look for them in the ruins. Tabinda said “No!” so forcefully it startled them into silence.

Junaid stared at her and said he was sure they’d be back when they got hungry.

The fire whooshed and retreated from the night and Junaid and Dara piled on more wood. A couple of cadets laid out their blankets on the ground near the fire. Before they could start settling in, from beyond the looming citadel came scraping sounds. Pebbles rolled.

Someone was walking the dark near the Buddhist stupa.

They all glanced up. Just a black sky crinkled with a faint yellow moon. In the distance a door swung open on screeching hinges. A shout and a crash.

“Abar,” yelled Junaid, springing to his feet. “Is that you?”

One of the cadets screamed and shrank back from a night-thickened alley twenty feet away from which a tall figure jutted its shadowed face. It spasmed briefly, rotating its arms laden with glinting glass bangles above its head, and vanished. The pounding of boots on stony ground. In the ruins someone laughed. The sound was shrill and intermittent, more birdlike than human, and masked the running footsteps until they faded. Junaid shouted the boys’ names and plunged into the dark beyond the fire, the halo from his flashlight jittering up and down the streets.

A sound came from beside Noor. She turned. Tabinda’s face was doughy, a faint twitch at the left corner of her lips. Her forehead glistened with moisture. Her chubby hand was at her throat, massaging it vigorously.

She’s sweating, Noor thought with wonder. In this cold.

An unfamiliar dry smell flooded her nose, triggering memories that disappeared before she could seize them, leaving her breathless and frightened. Her eyes teared up from a sudden raging headache. Tabinda whispered — so softly Noor doubted anyone else heard. The words made the hair stand on the back of her neck. She would remember them later, like a dream song or a grief prayer running in her head again and again while the abandoned city rustled and the river stink of dead fish and reeds and gelatinous old creatures crept into her nostrils.

“He opens his mouth so,” said Tabinda. “The Terrible Emperor of the Night.”

The cadets held hands, bleary eyes peering in every direction. The ancient houses were entombed in night. Narrow alleys meandered off into the black. So much space devoid of life, yet something stirred ; somewhere in the ruins Junaid stumbled, crashed, and cursed before falling silent.

Noor’s vision pulsed with her heartbeat.

“What’s happening, Miss?” cried one of the boys.

“To the bus,” she hissed. “Now.”

They gaped at her before turning and dashing to the vehicle. Falling over each other, they covered the distance in seconds, piled into the bus, burrowed into their seats. Noor slammed the lock home once Tabinda was aboard. They all stared at the mounds gleaming like gravestones in the moonlight.