Musad always stirred up trouble and pushed his personal agenda to prevent any more hiring of women in the company. He didn't think women were competent, and still believed that we should stay at home, in the kitchen, taking care of the kids. His presence made all the women work twice as hard to prove self-worth, but that paid off. They were eventually paid higher and were promoted faster.
He knocked the surface of the desk with his knuckles. "Shoot me an email if there are any updates."
"Will do," I replied, avoiding eye contact and swallowing my distain.
I glanced at my screen; a yellow window had popped up in the corner. Why didn’t I notice this earlier? A reminder of a conference call that was now thirty-three minutes overdue. Pulling out my wireless headset, I dialed the number to join the conference call. I was so glad Musad didn't catch a whiff of my negligence. It would please him to have something hanging against me.
"It was a staff meeting and half of you were not even in the building," a voice yelled from the other end of the phone. Which meeting? Was he talking about the staff meeting held earlier this week? If it’s that one I’m in the clear. I wasn’t obligated to attend.
"Why were half of the employees absent last week? Half! I need an explanation by the end of the day," he demanded.
Maybe because they didn’t care unless their butts were on the line. No one was in your important conference call because they were still in bed snoozing, knowing there would be no consequences! I muted my microphone and listened to the rest of the meeting while typing on my keyboard and silently replying to all his rhetorical questions.
"This is reflecting poorly on our department." His voice became sharper. Punctuality was a serious issue for the company. A lot of the employees had a laid-back attitude and lacked time-management skills. Therefore, timeliness was not of extraordinary importance. No one cared about time and that was the truth—simple as that. I glanced down as the phone blinked. Another call was coming in. Should I take it?
"I will not tolerate this repeating itself," he continued.
The guy holding the meeting walked into his office forty-five minutes late on a good day. He ended the call, disconnecting without signing off. He must have been pissed. I hung up and took the other call with a sigh. It’s going to be a long day.
"Hello? Sara speaking," I answered.
"They canceled our flight!" a voice on the other end screamed.
"Who is this?" As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized who it was.
"It's your grandfather calling from the grave," she said—a typical reply any self-respecting Saudi would make.
"Well, Deema, you did sound like an old man." I defended my reaction.
"They canceled our trip," she repeated, ignoring my sarcasm.
"Why?" I asked.
"I have no idea,” she answered. "I got an SMS saying that the flight was canceled."
"You still use SMS?" I wondered out loud.
"We are going to lose our booking." This time she sounded a bit angrier. There was the old man voice again.
"But we booked it days ago. Are they putting us on a later flight, Grandpa?"
"I've been on the phone with them all morning. The airline keeps placing me on hold—this is stupid!" she complained, irritated.
"Shocker," I said. The airlines pulled stunts like this all the time. They were always delaying or canceling flights without any prior notice or compensation. On a lighter note, they had state-of-the-art planes and severed great food.
"What are we gonna do?" she asked, voice low. "I’ll let May know we’re not going."
"Don't jump to any conclusions just yet. I'm sure it's a glitch in the system, and they’ll clear it up. I'll try calling them as soon as I'm done with what’s in my hand." I shuffled files around on my desk. "And just so you know, the hotel is one hundred percent nonrefundable, so unless we can teleport there, we'll lose that too."
"I'll keep calling them. Let me know if you hear anything," she said.
"Yeah, sure. We'll figure something out."
"Okay. I'll leave you to it. Talk to you later. Bye."
"Laters." I hung up in time to overhear a conversation between two men standing behind the translucent glass wall of the break room not far from my desk. One was Badr the head of the HR, standing tall in his thoab, and the other I couldn’t identify. He was in a suit, holding a milk box.
"Within the last three weeks, the absence level has dramatically increased. Attendance levels dropped thirty percent. What is going on?" the guy said, sounding anxious.
"I don't think it’s anything serious,” Badr answered, adjusting the pen hanging on his front thoab pocket. “There seems to be a virus going around. They are mostly on sick leave."
"But it’s a high number," said the guy I didn’t know. "Plus, I don't have a reliable source, but I heard most of them have not even called in to work."
"I don't think it’s anything we should worry about," Badr replied, his hands playing in his side pockets, not sounding convinced himself.
"So there's nothing to worry about?" the guy asked.
"If I knew anything, you'd know it too." His voice made it sound less reassuring. They exited the break room toward the back offices. I lifted myself out my chair to try to catch a glimpse of them. The other guy’s foot dragged as he walked and slurped his milk.
This could explain why I’d been waiting a week for replies. Most of the emails I sent out were sent right back with an "out of the office" autoreply. Were we going on strike? Did people simultaneously get sick? Did this have anything to do with the cats or fish? None of this made any sense and something felt sickeningly wrong. I swept aside all thoughts and tried to carry on with my work.
Then my phone flashed. Another text.
Malak: Hey, so, I’ve been searching’ trying to figure out what's wrong with the fish and the cats. There's something bigger behind this.
Sara: Anything interesting?
Malak: I looked into the fish. All the symptoms led to one conclusion. The fish had already died.
Sara: That’s not right.
Malak: I know. There is no other explanation. I Still couldn’t find anything on the cats.
Sara: What could it be?
Malak: I have no idea.
Sara: Okay. We’ll talk more about this later I have loads and loads of work to finish.
Malak: I'll dig some more.
Sara: Laters.
After shaking off all notions of fish and cats, I was able to complete what I could in light of the recent disappearances of employees impending my progress. I tried calling the airline with no luck—they’d stopped taking calls. After an hour on the line, I finally got through only to be transferred to a voicemail:
"All flights are canceled until further notice."
Chapter 8
A village 200 km from the Empty Quartets, Saudi Arabia.
Population 390
Two months earlier
Agroup of men carried an eight-year-old boy. The boy kicked and screamed under his constraints. His eyes rolled back as he moaned, trembling between the men’s hands.
“In here.” A man greeted them at a side door of a one-story house. The separate entrance led to a separate structure. He ushered them in.
The men rushed past him, slipping off their Saudi sandals — leather flip flops—at the door as they entered. They laid the boy over a white blanket spread out on the floor in the center of the room.
“Hurry,” one of the men carrying the boy said urgently and gently lowered the fragile body on the hard ground. “Where is the Shaikh?”
“He’ll be right out,” the man who greeted them said and closed the door.
“We cannot wait any longer,” the man replied. “This is bad.”
The guy stared at the boy. He’d seen many cases of people who claimed to be possessed by a malevolent entity, but he had never seen anything as this. “How long has he been this way?”
The boy’s father frowned and glance
d at the young man who stood next to him. “Yesterday,” he said.
“Yesterday?” the man asked, his eyebrows high and knotted. He turned his gaze back to the boy. The boy’s skin was loose and bruised, his eyes bulged from their sockets and his swollen tongue flickered in and out of his mouth. The man prayed in silence. He could not find the words to comfort these men. He noticed the ropes around the boy’s little hands and feet. “Why is he tied?”
“He’s been somewhat violent,” the father said, his eyes filled with guilt.
“Violent, how?”
“He attacked his mom and two sisters,” the father said, eyeing his only son lying on the floor, deciding not to mention the fact that his son not only attacked, but bit his mother and sisters. “He got a fever and things escalated quickly.”
The other men shuffled around uncomfortably. The boy refused to sit still. His demonic moans echoed throughout the small room. He arched his back as if he was being pulled upward by an invisible force and wailed.
The young man that stood next to the boy’s father looked at his cousin, feeling helpless and wished there was something he could do to help. Family was everything in his culture. Family always stuck by one another, always helping. Family ties were never to be broken and remained a priority. His toes brushed the hard carpet beneath him. He stood over a burnt patch of the carpet. He shuffled to the left, away from it. Away from whatever evil happened there. He glanced around the room, four pale walls, with parts of it peeled off. A prayer mat hung on one wall, while another was covered in posters, posters full of texts from the Quran. The posters were all handwritten. There was virtually no furniture, only a gloomy sofa and a table in the corner of the room. A white sheet was folded neatly on one of the sofas. He ambulated toward it and unfolded as he brought it to his little cousin and covered his shivering body.
Although the older cousin knew it didn’t make sense, he believed his cousin’s body shrunk. It also reeked of rot. But he thought it was because of his sickness and not being able to shower for days. He crouched next to his cousin and pulled the sheets over his chest to keep him warm. The boy snapped and sank his teeth, biting his older cousin’s hand. The older cousin fell back and pushed himself backward, giving as much distance between them as possible.
“Are you okay?” a man asked him.
“He bit me.” His lower lip pushed up, and the corners pulled down, revealing his lower gum. He stood on his feet and used his other hand to cover the bite. “He bit me, dad.”
“You’re okay.” He took his son by the hand and sat him on the sofa “Let me see the bite.”
The cousin uncovered his hand, revealing the teeth mark carved into his skin. The boy looked down and instantly felt a breath of relief. There’s not a lot of blood, I’m fine, it’s not serious.
“Does it hurt?” the dad asked, pulling some napkins off the table and placing them on the wound.
“No,” he said, and it didn’t. He felt nothing. But the sudden jump of his cousin scared him. He forced a laugh out. “I’m okay.”
“We’ll check that as soon as we’re done with your cousin.” He patted his son’s shoulder. His son nodded and decided he would only observe his cousin from a distance.
The Shaikh walked in and greeted everyone and did his best to calm everyone down. These men were talking nonsense. And they were losing hope as fast as they walked in. The Shaikh took it upon himself to help these God-fearing people. He considered the boy; the boy appeared visibly ill. The Shaikh refused to have his faith shaken. He got closer to the boy and sat on the floor next to him. This is a test from God, he reminded himself. And he must pass it. He would help this boy break his possession and be free from the devil and his work. He started to loudly repeat verses from the holy scripter. The crisp white sheet turned red with spots of blood appearing on it. The older cousin with the bite stared from the corner sofa, not daring to come closer. The door opened and slammed shut, sending all the men in an alert position. The Shaikh reminded himself the lock was broken and on windy nights such as tonight, the wind pushed the door open.
“Is this normal?” one of the men asked while he hovered over them.
“There is nothing normal about this,” the Shaikh said. "But you must not lose faith.”
The Shaikh did not stop reading but instead read louder. The boy jerked; his bones crackled under his skin. He moved in such stiffness, causing his jaw to snap. The sheets covering the little boy’s body peeled off, revealing the horrors hiding beneath. The exposure of his body was wrong, improper.
Something didn’t feel right to the little boy’s father. This was a mistake. We should have taken him to the clinic. The man’s brother placed his hand on his shoulder, comforting him. He wanted to apologize for his son’s action, for his son biting his cousin, but he knew his brother understood. For his brother smiled and comforted him, repeating things will be fine. The brother removed his hand from his brother’s shoulder and turned to check on his own son, who sat quietly nursing his wound. But his son was no longer looking at them, his eyes fully dilated as he gazed upward at the light hanging from the ceiling. His hands jerked softly, reassuring his father he was okay. He turned his gaze back to his nephew.
“Where was he when this started?” the Shaikh asked.
“He was playing outside with the neighbor’s kids,” the man said. "He came in like this. I…” He didn’t know what else he could say.
Unknown to the Shaikh, the boy’s heart stopped beating the night before. There was no blood flowing through his vulnerable body. Spots of purple and blue randomly covered the boy’s skin, spots where the blood stellated. The Shaikh placed his hand over the boy’s forehead to read holy verses over him but felt no warmth left in the boy. His body acclimated to the ambient room temperature. The Shaikh sensed the stiffness of the skin under his warm, sweaty palm. A hardness that could only be explained as rigor mortis. The dead boy pulled his head up and bit the Shaikh’s hand. As a defense response, the Shaikh pulled his arm and body away. The smell, the stiffness, the appearance—the Shaikh realized the boy’s flesh was rotting, the tongue in his mouth was rotting. He’s dead, he thought. The clock on the wall shimmed; it was midnight. The time demons come out to mix with the living.
“He’s dead.” The Shaikh’s eyes widened. He looked back to the cousin dragging his feet and moaning as he bit into the arm of his own father.
Chapter 9
Iwoke up to the sound of Plumpy singing along to his favorite tune, the alarm clock. Both sounds annoyed me enough to get up and do it all again—get ready, eat, work, sleep, repeat. The days went by reluctantly, and the hours even more so. I was working more hours than usual to catch up on the mountain of work that had piled up, and the weekend could not come fast enough. I barely talked to any of the girls, but I took comfort in knowing I would spend some time with them later that night. I rolled out of bed while Plumpy performed a solo, whistling the notes of the alarm from memory. I drew the curtains open, allowing rays to spill in and encouraging the bird to sing louder. I stepped closer to the brightened cage.
“Hey, Plump,” I said in an annoying baby voice. “Who’s a good birdy?”
Plumpy mimicked my tone in Love bird language. I checked his food bowl where a few pellets lay half chewed.
“Wow, you’re getting a little chub chub.” Nope, I have big feathers, Plumpy chippered back. I pulled out his bowl and filled it with fattening pellets. Did they even make slim mini pellets?
“I’m putting you on a strict veggie diet, Chub-Plump,” I said.
He tilted his head. Not everyone was blessed with a high metabolism, Sara. He jumped up to the top horizontal bar, showing off his round figure. I opened the door for him and a feathery ball of delightful blue flew above me.
“Sorry, bud, you gotta go on a diet.” He took off faster, protesting, determined to prove me wrong. He circulated around my room a few times and landed on my vanity next to an open bag of chips.
He caught his reflection in the
mirror. I look perfect, stop projecting, he chippered in parrot-fashion then turned around and disappeared into the bag of salty chips.
After getting ready for work and letting Plumpy back in, I went down to the living room to wait for the driver. The living room was located on the first floor of our three-floor villa. It was a somewhat traditional Saudi house, spacious and private. Like most houses in the country, it was enclosed by tall concrete walls that blocked in each building. The houses in the neighborhood were not uniform. They differed in color and design, but a desert scheme dominated the majority. They also differed in shape and size, but from an overhead angle, they all looked alike. I lay down on the sofa—a vintage brown leather three-seater—surrounded by tribal Bedouin art on the eggshell walls. My father took great pride in collecting heritage art. So did my mother, who collected handmade antiques and furniture from all over the Middle East. Under me was a handmade Arabian carpet made from camel and goat hair—a souvenir from our summer in Egypt. Over the carpet rested a leather chair my mother had picked up in Morocco the following summer. The mismatched furniture came together nicely, and it was a touch of my parents’ presence in their absence. From where I lay, I had a clear view of the front yard, where the undisturbed water in the pool reflected the sky. I could see Mary, our housemaid cleaning outside. Her body did not fall into my visual path and only her floating hands remained visible. She always wore neon bandannas so I wouldn’t miss her head if it popped out. I turned around to the empty fish tank.
"I guess they finally died," I whispered. The tank shimmered with the light from the TV screen mounted on the wall next to it. The news was on. I wasn’t watching, but I liked having something play in the background, and the motions gave me the feeling I was not alone.
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