“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. Terrified of what her past held and 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.
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 s
tiffness 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.
“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.
Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 4 Page 16