Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

“What was that?” said one cadet in a hitching voice.

“Someone turn on the light,” said another.

“No!”

“The boys,” Noor said. “Probably lost and calling for help.”

“By laughing? Are you fucking kidding me?” Tabrez said incredulously.

“Watch your language.”

“Screw that. Did you even hear it?” He leaned his brow against the window glass and gazed at the bonfire wavering by the citadel. “That wasn’t Abar. Didn’t even sound human.”

“I shouldn’t have returned. I thought, I thought . . . I was wrong ,” Tabinda cried. She had sagged into a back seat. Her hands, like small animals, were hiding beneath her ample thighs.

Noor swallowed. Her lips were parched.

“Maybe an animal. A jackal perhaps,” she said.

“Didn’t sound like a jackal either,” Tabrez said. “Who was that man in the alley?”

The Terrible Emperor of the Night, Noor thought incoherently. She didn’t have the energy to grope her way back to question Tabinda. The woman was sunk in her seat, head lolling on her breasts like a rotten fruit.

Noor took note of the remaining water bottles under the bench behind the driver’s seat. Two twenty-four packs. She removed one, drank from it, passed it around. Someone made a choking sound then fell silent. Noor raised a fist and knuckled her throbbing right temple.

Tabrez rapped at his window with his knuckles. Someone told him to shut the fuck up. He glared back. Tap tap!

They waited for Junaid. Their breath misted the windshield glass and white sheathed it until their peering faces disappeared.

Tap tap. Tap tap tap.

Some time later sheermaal was handed around again. Noor declined the bread. An odd lethargy had settled on her. The kids chewed, filling the bus with sounds of gnashing teeth and crumpling aluminum. Noor’s neck ached as if steel rivets were being driven into it.

She fell into sleep.

She was a teenager — dressed in a black shirt, blue jeans, and leather boots — standing in the middle of Mohenjo-Daro with a bomb vest strapped under her clothes. Her hair whiplashed in the desert breeze. Her gaze was fixed on the citadel — now shaped like the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York, stripes of neon blue and red racing around its sides. Noor’s finger caressed the trigger poking her flat stomach. Her throat was dry.

A finger prodded her in the small of her back. Muneer. He was young and sallow, exactly how she remembered him. Eyes large and white from thyroid proptosis.

“For Dad,” he said, voice guttural, toad-like. He pointed a bitten fingernail at hundreds of skeletal men, women, and children twitching their way through sun-baked alleys. They wore business suits, sweatshirts, dresses, and tourist caps. Suitcases and backpacks dangled from bones picked clean by time. They converged at the terminal like pilgrims at the Kaaba, pawing at the steel armature, phalanges digging into bricks, clenched fists thudding on glass.

“For their sins. Go, little sister, go.” Muneer looked at her. His bulging eyes made him look shocked and insane. “Soon I will join you.”

He shoved her forward. She staggered and began to walk. The people of the city pounded on the walls of the terminal. The half-flesh on a few faces was swollen and distorted, washed by electrified colors blazing from the building’s facade. Noor’s vest was rough and heavy and it was difficult to breathe. It was summer. She was sweating. Her finger itched.

I can’t, she whispered. I don’t want to.

But no one was listening, not even God. Faith yanked her forward and she went on a loyal trot, getting closer to point zero. The crowd jittered to the tune of death. An infant drooped from his mother’s shoulder and pulled her straggly hair; and in a minute there would be blood, there would be devastation.

Noor turned and bolted. The ground shifted beneath her. Muneer’s face was everywhere. “No, you bitch, come back. Coward !” he screamed. The world was white noise and it hurt her head. She ran and ran and ran. She would hide somewhere; if she could just reach safety, everything would be all right. No pain, no suffering, no dying, no shame, no guilt. Noor sprinted and the dead sprinted behind her, hundreds of taluses, tarsals, and metatarsals rattling on the ground.

“Pashupati is dead, you miserable slut,” her brother shrieked. “He’s dead and nothing will do but youthful human blood.”

Noor woke, shivering. It was freezing and quiet. The bus was dark, the seats empty. Did Junaid return and take them all elsewhere? Why wouldn’t he wake her? Empty bottles, squares of foil, and sheermaal crumbs littered the bus floor. She pulled the shawl tight around her chest and struggled upright. The windows were blinded with white and for a moment she thought they were covered with snow like her bedroom window back in Hanover after a storm. Dad would clear it, his gloved hands patting the glittering frost off.

But Dad was gone. Extraordinary rendition , her lawyer called it.

She peered closely and saw the white was fog. Thick smoky layers pressed against the glass, consuming the bus. Sometime during the night it had crept in from the river. She glanced at her watch. It was just past midnight.

She wanted to turn the headlights on but was afraid of what she might see; the dream hadn’t left her yet. At least her headache was gone. She made her way to the exit and peered out: white upon pristine white. Wasn’t white the sum of all colors? Was it Goethe who said color itself was a degree of darkness? She couldn’t even see three feet away. There was a metallic tang in her mouth as if she could taste the vapor.

“Junaid,” she yelled. Instantly the fog devoured the cry. “Abar. Tabinda. Anyone.”

No answer. Just a susurration of dust and weeds in the wind. No night birds sang. No insects chirped. She was blind and alone. Terror came then on dark wings, engulfing her heart. She shoved it away, even though her stomach and bladder quivered. How could she not have heard them leave? She retreated from the door and clicked on an overhead light. The glow spread like a thin puddle. Her brown eyes were wide and crimson-webbed in the rearview mirror; she looked like she was about to scream. Her hijab had fallen offand lay draped over her shoulder. Noor fixed it with trembling fingers.

Maybe she should drive away. Leave them all here. The thought was so powerful she actually took a couple steps toward the driver’s seat before stopping. There was no key in the ignition. Of course, Junaid had it. Movement in the periphery of her vision made her turn.

The bus door had slid open. Tabinda stood in the doorway, a silent rotund silhouette with streams of fog snaking between her ankles. Helplessness had left her eyes, leaving a glassy calm behind. “I came back for you,” she said.

Noor wanted to weep for joy. She ran and flung herself at the older woman. Tabinda’s arms tightened around her. “Sorry. The kids were cold and you were sleeping.”

“Where are they now?”

“In a warm place.”

Noor squeezed her one more time and stepped back. “Let’s go. Have you seen Junaid?”

Tabinda shook her head. “No.” Her face was half-paralyzed now. The corner of her mouth sagged. Her left eye was half-lidded.

“Are you all right?”

Tabinda massaged her cheek. “I had a stroke some years back. This happens once in a great while.”

“Were you here in the ruins when you had the stroke?” Noor said. The question came to her familiarly, as if she’d asked this before in a dream.

Tabinda’s lips had cracked from cold. They bled a little when she tried to smile.

“How’d you know?” She held the door open. “Shouldn’t we get going?”

They strode through air dense as snow. Noor couldn’t, for the life of her, understand how Tabinda kept her bearings. Shadows heaved and parted before them. They stepped on twigs, nettles, sharp rocks. The fog sucked its breath in, exhaled and rushed past. When the texture of the ground changed, she knew they were on the city streets. Chips of masonry crunched underfoot; stones, brick shards, gum wrappers, a worker’s implement. At least that’s what she thought it was. Long and pale, it gleamed in the moonlight. Before she could bend to look at it, her companion took her hand and jerked her in the opposite direction. “This way.”