The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu: New Lovecraftian Fiction

by Paula Guran

  “Yes, yes.” Farooq waved his hand impatiently. “Spare me heartbreaking accounts of army orphans. I’ll give you a quick tour. Is this your entire party? Where’s Ms. Tabinda? She’s the one who called me.”

  Noor glanced to the exit. Junaid and Tabinda were setting up lunch. She felt guilty that she couldn’t help with such chores; her inability to speak Sindi prevented communication with the bus driver whose Urdu was rudimentary. She wished the older professor could at least take the tour. The Mohenjo-Daro trip was her idea.

  “Seems like we’re the only ones for now.”

  Farooq nodded glumly. “This way then. We’ll start with the Memories of the Ancients display.”

  She nudged the cadets and they followed him up the northern corridor.

  His voice echoed as they passed through an arched doorway into a long hall flanked by glass cabinets on either side. “Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Indus Valley are the three earliest civilizations of the Old World – China came later – and all, of course, developed along water bodies. We used to believe they evolved and thrived in isolation, but now we know that Indus Valley and Mesopotamia traded with each other for centuries.” He pointed left and right at carnelian necklaces, sculptures, gemstone beads, ivory combs, and brass containers with traces of herbal collyrium.

  Noor’s belly cramped suddenly. Period pains? But she wasn’t due for another week. It would explain the headache she had earlier that morning. Wincing, she rubbed her abdomen.

  “Discovered in 1922 by an officer of the Archaeological Survey of India, Mohenjo-Daro is thought to have been the most important city of the Indus Valley Civilization. Spread out over two hundred and fifty acres on a series of mounds, its heyday was from 2500 to 1900 BC. It was suddenly abandoned then. No one knows why.”

  Noor glanced over her shoulder. The kids looked suicidally bored. They drifted behind her, listless, eyes glazed. The Pashtun boy, Dara, had his nose pressed against a cabinet, palms splayed against the glass, but she thought his reflected green stare was fixed on her. His biceps bulged on either side of his head.

  “A Buddhist monastery was discovered atop the city’s main citadel. You can still see the stupa. We don’t know why the builders decided to erect it there hundreds of years after the city was abandoned, but most of Mohenjo-Daro still lies underground. The mounds grew organically over centuries as people built platforms and walls for their houses. The name Mohenjo-Daro means ‘Mounds of the Dead’ in Sindi.”

  Farooq waved at a ceiling-high stucco wall covered with black-andwhite and sepia photographs. A flicker of interest went through the cadets. They crowded around aerial and ground views of the ruins.

  Noor had seen these in slideshows Tabinda put on before the trip. She went to Dara who hadn’t moved. He edged left to allow her to lean against the cabinet. This close, he was taller than her. He smelled of sweat and cologne.

  “I’m sorry about the other day,” she said in a low voice. “I didn’t mean to barge in on you two like that.”

  The tips of Dara’s brown ears darkened. She could see the tension in his bunched neck and shoulder muscles.

  “And here,” boomed the curator’s voice, “is the most famous statue found in Mohenjo-Daro. You might have seen the Priest-King’s picture in textbooks on Indus Civilization. This is a detailed replica made from a mold of the real thing kept in the National Museum in Karachi.”

  “It’s okay. Really,” Noor told Dara. The boy’s fingers had closed over the edge of the cabinet. “I won’t tell anyone. Some of my friends back in the US were like you. One of them was bullied and ended up struggling with depression for years. I hated that.” Her gaze went to the cadets gathered around the pictures. What would they do if they found out about this kid or his friend currently away during winter break? She didn’t want to imagine. Seized by instinct, she lifted the corner of her hijab and hissed at him, “We all have secrets. Look.”

  He didn’t turn to face her, but his eyes flicked in her direction. They widened when he saw her left shoulder.

  “Some think the Priest-King is neither a king nor a man. Some believe this is in fact a woman of considerable importance to the people of Mohenjo-Daro. A high priestess or maybe a eunuch who led their religious rituals.”

  “We all have secrets,” Noor said again. Dara looked at her with wary eyes. He was a quiet backbencher, rarely said a word. His grades were average. She used to wonder if he was slow.

  She dropped her hijab into place.

  Dara rapped a knuckle against the glass, and his eyes were green fires. “You don’t know anything,” he whispered fiercely, turned, and fled down the hall.

  She watched him go, then walked back to join the cadets peering at something in a glass case. Farooq glanced up as she approached.

  “So glad you could join us.” He adjusted the Sindi cap on his head. “I was just telling this young man about seal thirty-four. Dr. Gregory Fossel of University of Pennsylvania believes it represents a sacrifice ritual. Care to listen in?”

  She watched him unlock the case and withdraw two artifacts. In one hand he held a reproduction of the tan soapstone seal. The boys murmured and jostled to get closer. A tall angular deity with a horned headdress and bangles on both arms stood atop a fig tree. With a gleeful face it looked down on a kneeling worshipper.

  Nearby was a small stool on which lay a human head.

  “Seal thirty-four is taken as evidence by some that human sacrifice was practiced as a fertility rite in this region. Similar to such offerings to Kali in certain parts of India.”

  Noor looked at the seal. Below the kneeling worshipper were a giant ram and seven figures in procession. They wore single-plumed headdresses, bangles, and long skirts. The sight chilled her; it was so brutal and somber. Her belly cramped again.

  “Dr. Fossel, however, has argued that the presence of Pashupati’s seal,” Farooq held up the stone in his other hand. It showed a naked figure with three grim faces and ram horns seated on a stool surrounded by deer, rhinoceros, and elephants, “means that the people of Indus had the option to proffer animals as substitute for humans.”

  “Pashupati?” Someone chortled. Noor glanced up. It was Abar, the boy who had slaughtered the goat on Junaid’s orders. He had a malicious grin on his face. “What kind of faggot name is that?” He elbowed a friend.

  “One of Shiva’s names.” The curator glared at him. “His incarnation as the Lord of Beasts.”

  Both boys burst out laughing. A few others smiled uneasily.

  “That’s enough,” Noor told the boys. Giggling, they strolled down the hall. “Sorry about that,” she said to Farooq.

  His face was pinched and red. “That’s the sort of kids we’re raising now. Forget it. It’s closing time anyway.” He muttered something inaudible and led them back to the lobby.

  At the exit, Noor flashed a smile and said, “Thank you for the tour. Very educational.”

  He nodded and began to shut the door.

  “Every place has its secret flavor,” Noor said through the door opening. “Here’s a question I always ask curators and guides.” She touched his sleeve and smiled brightly. “Tell us one thing about the site you normally wouldn’t tell visitors.”

  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 be
low 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.

  Noor hesitated, then said, “He probably wants us to start gathering the boys. We should leave.” Her stomach and flanks tingled. An insistent pressure surged through her lower abdomen. Early, but this was it, no doubt about it now. And she didn’t even have pads.

  Together they descended the stairs into the lengthening shadows of the city. Noor glanced at her watch. It was three in the afternoon.

  Junaid finally caught up with them, panting and shaky. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?” he demanded, glaring at Tabinda.

  “My purse is in the bus,” she said. “Why?”

  “We were just about to call the boys,” Noor said.

  He shook his head. “No. I don’t want to create a situation.”

  “What?”

  His face was pale. “Colonel Mahmud just called me. There was a terrorist attack at Cadet College Larkana. At least fifty armed men stormed the premises.”

  “In Dokri?” Noor’s hand went to her mouth. “But we were just there this morning. Oh my God. Are people hurt?”

  “Ten dead, and they’re holding the surviving cadets and teachers hostage. Two military contingents just left for the
town. But that’s not the worst of it. Army’s got word that a twin attack’s been planned on Petaro as well. They’re targeting cadet schools for maximum reportage.” His manicured fingers rubbed his throat. “Mahmud doesn’t want us to return. He wants us to stay here and go to the army base in Sukkar when possible.”

  “Sukkar?” Tabinda’s voice was full of incredulity. “That’s a hundred and fifty kilometers away. How will we get past Dokri? The road to Sukkar goes through the city!”

  “I know that. Don’t you think I know that?” His voice was getting louder and a pair of cadets turned their heads.

  “Lashkir-e-Jhangvi?” Tabinda said in a low voice.

  “No. Pakistani Taliban.”

  “How far to Sukkar if we go south first and take a detour?” Noor said.

  Junaid’s nostrils flared. “Four hours by bus.”

  So at least ten to twelve on foot? She imagined trudging on the cracked, unpaved road under a moonless sky as night fell and surrounded them on all sides. The thought was unpleasant and ridiculous and she pushed it away. They had a bus and a bus driver, and these were cadets, not kindergarten kids.

  “Did you talk to the driver?” Tabinda said. “What did he say?”

  “He wants to leave. He knows the area well and says he could take back roads, but, look, the problem is the goddamn Taliban.” He spat in the dust. “They have spies everywhere. Until it’s certain the townsfolk won’t snitch on us, Mahmud doesn’t want us to leave Mohenjo-Daro. There is an airstrip five kilometers west of here. Worst case: if the hostage situation doesn’t clear up, he can call for a large chopper to airlift us out.”

  Stuck in the ruins. Noor cast a glance at Tabinda. Her face was a mask.

  Junaid sounded distracted. “It’s cold but there are blankets in the bus, and food, and I can get a fire going. We’ll tell the boys it’s an Eid bonfire. Dammit,” he said through gritted teeth. “I want to be there with the rangers. Larkana’s my school!”