Dajingha

The remains of the ancient house lay like a hollowed skull on the Northern side of the dry reservoir, a revetment, a dream gone sour, empty amongst the palm tree fronds of the little desert oasis. During the week, the wind blew spinnaker drifts of sand and dead leaves against the perimeter walls and played amongst the empty windows and roofless courtyards, its pranks and tomfoolery witnessed only by ruined, sun-blinded walls. The trees captured the winds, translated them into the hidden language of the desert, a lexicon of clicks and creaks and gentle moans, heard only by empty platforms, terraces, and hallways that led to nowhere.
That, at least, is what I imagined when Saleem told me about his family retreat, his Dajingha.

At first glance, it could easily have been overlooked. It was a nowhere place after-all, a large, two or three-story enclosure, stone built and dilapidated, flanked on either side by a loose, ramshackle collection of outbuildings.
Balanced where it was, on the lip of the Selway reservoir, the great concrete basin that once formed a vast man-made lagoon to rival Indigo Eye, it could easily have gone unnoticed. As a permanent place of residence, its day had obviously come and gone. Now, though, it had found a new lease of life. Why Saleem had chosen to purchase such a place was beyond explaining.
Gunter Masterson accurately echoed my own cynicism as we unloaded the vehicles together, unsettled by the silence that came barrelling out of the dunes as if to welcome us.
"This is it?" he muttered, unimpressed.
I had to admit it: when Saleem had invited me to spend a few days out in the desert with himself and a few friends, I hadn't imagined that I would be sleeping in what had appeared at first glance to be a derelict ruin. Saleem and his wife Miranda, however, had brought their home with them. They hung fairy lights and oil lamps, brought collections of furniture out from underground casements, arranged solar arrays on the roof spaces, ready for the morning.
By 17:00 a brace of kites and pennants flew from the towers, snapping with the Easterlies, wrapping the house in the mystique of a mediaeval castle, the dwelling place of a knight or a baron of the realm.
By sundown Miranda had placed candles in the cavernous stone chambers that led from the central courtyard and upon the narrow stairways that connected the floors and battlements. Vases were filled with flowers, bowls overflowed with fruit. Wine glasses were suddenly brimming. The atmosphere was relaxed and calm.

"How exactly did you come by this place?" I said.
Saleem smiled. "We travel. We heard of a crumbling mansion that the locals kept livestock in."
"We saw it and put in an offer that afternoon." Miranda added
We sat around the large stone table that Saleem had constructed on one of Dajingha’s wide, open terraces. Candles littered the gathering evening, pin pricks of light that only just succeeded in dispelling the notion that we were miles from Babel, miles from anything resembling civilisation. The sun had set less than an hour ago. Now, there was a chill in the air, a tantalising hint of moisture that intimated the beginnings of a dewfall that would be long gone by morning.
"Not an easy job I would have thought." Gunter said, joining us.
Gunter was an architect by trade. He worked for the Structural History Office in Jamenta, helping to settle claims of territory, disputes involving the Old Districts, areas that had been abandoned at the height of the Taint, land that was only now beginning to become viable again. I assumed that Saleem had invited him and his wife Hilljia in the hope that they would be able to reveal something about the history of Dajingha. I didn’t know them personally, but the weekend would provide a good chance to get acquainted, if only as useful contacts.
The other guest seated at the table needed no introduction, not to myself anyway. Lucy Klein was known amongst the university fraternity as something of a Fixer, a supplier of items rare and difficult to obtain. ‘Smuggler’ was probably too strong a descriptive term, although one that she no doubt took great delight in playing up to, and presumably encouraged amongst her trader connections. I was glad that Saleem had invited her. It had been a long time since our schedules had enabled us to accompany each other on assignment.
"Union bureaucracy.” Saleem continued, “What can I say? It took us an entire year before we were even able to get the place surveyed. The tribes did the most amazing job of dragging their feet. It was the Tenancy Act that finally moved things along.”
I frowned, looking to Gunther for explanation.
"It’s complicated,“ he said, “Essentially the act allows for Claim to be placed on any building or structure that evidence shows has been abandoned for more than ten years.”
“Controversial.” Lucy whispered.
“Of course. But sometimes it’s all we have to get a dispute resolved.”
“So the tribes were over-ruled?” I said.
"Exactly." Saleem grinned, "The place became ours literally overnight."
"Any idea what it was before?" Lucy asked.
“Before the goats?” Saleem shrugged, "No official records. I was hoping Gunter might be able to shed some light."
"We only have one source,” Gunther said, “so I can’t endorse it as accurate. A post-Taint census mentions Dajingha as the birthplace of a local tribal dignitary. Whether he actually spent any time here is anyone’s guess. We have so little to go on."
I turned back to Saleem, "How do you stop looters from ruining all this for you?"
He looked over his shoulder, lifted a finger to the horizon, "You see the range of hills?"
I followed his gaze out beyond the curved rim of the reservoir, to where the land rose into something more definite than sand. The small row of peaks had to be over fifteen miles away.
"There is a Union over that way, a little desert Water Still. They pop by once in a while to make sure the place is all right. Sometimes they stay a few days before heading back. Miranda and I find the gifts they leave behind.”
“Gifts?”
“Flowers, little items of jewellery, those kinds of things. The merest hint of tribal interest keeps the bandits away."
“And you’re sure they’re leaving these trinkets for yourself?” I said.
Saleem smiled, exchanged a glance with his wife that I could have sworn was more than just a look of affection, and laughed nervously.

Later, after dark, I wandered the battlements of Saleem’s fortress. The tops of the ruined walls provided an Allure that circled the entire perimeter, intersected at places by the remains of rooms that now resembled bastions.
In the East, the gradually fading sky was falling through shades of pink and blue, staining the desert with shadows that I could almost imagine had been hiding amongst the dunes all day, only now emerging to take advantage of the failing light.
The reservoir loomed impressively, a vast, dark circle, full with the night and infinitely deep. I could almost imagine it full with water, a mysterious and unfathomable lake. On the opposite side, the fossil-town of Callios perched quietly, a faded painting, a mirage, Dajingha’s dark twin.
Years before, the reservoir had been a playground for the rich. Callios had attracted its fair share of hotels, not entirely unlike the hotels found along the coast from Babel to Jamenta, a casino, numerous amusements and even a funfair. Now, like Dajingha and the rest of the Selway complex, the place was deserted.
I turned away, walked in the opposite direction along the wall-walk. Was it my eyes playing tricks or were there lights on the horizon, tiny, gently shimmering sparks set out amongst the hills as if the land had been sown with stars?
I saw Saleem coming up the stone steps to join me.
"You can see for miles out here," he said, "It’s my favourite part of the house. Your eyes become so much more sensitive to the darkness."
I pointed the lights out to him. He watched them dance with atmospheric distortion, the sands giving up the heat of the day.
“Sandsmen,” he said, dismissively, “Or a convoy passing.”
A noise to our left shattered the darkness. Miranda appeared on the steps, accompanied by the couple’s three children.
"Of course," Saleem continued, once they were within earshot, "They could always be Spirit Lights, come to steal you away." The children gave mock fright and ran off along the battlements to hide, laughing as they went.

At 03:00 something woke me from the lazy fronds of a dream. I lay still, letting the room reassemble from the unfamiliar jumble of shadows that it had become. Despite the fact that Saleem had given me one of only three rooms in the building with four walls and a roof intact, the night was anything but dark. The moon had risen. Now it sat bloated and fat, cresting the low ridge of hills in the distance like a dinner plate, a fossil. Its light streamed in through the open window space, casting everything in silver.
I got up, unable to sleep, threw some clothes on, went out onto the veranda. I had been there for some minutes before I realised that I wasn't the only one who had been having trouble sleeping.
Miranda, dressed only in an over-gown, stood perched against the balustrade at the far end of the terrace. She didn't acknowledge my approach. For a moment I wondered if she might in fact be sleepwalking. She possessed the strange plasticity of the somnambulist, that eerie, far-away-otherness that people who are prone to such things are known to display.
Eventually she spoke. "Look."
I followed her gaze out to the horizon, out to where the desert and the sky merged in a band of deep darkness so gradually that I was unable to tell where one began and the other ended. As I looked I became aware of something else, several somethings, lights, gently shimmering, dancing on the horizon like will-o’-the-wisps. I recognised now what I had seen before, wondered why Saleem had passed them off as convoy lights.
"Jack-o'-lanterns." Miranda whispered, "Spirit Lights."
"Earth lights." I said, gently reminding her of my scepticism in the face of the old tribal myths.
She failed to hear me, or chose not to. "They're closer every night. Saleem chooses to ignore them but I notice, I watch."
I wasn't quite sure of what I was witnessing. The late hour, coupled with the homemade wine that we had all indulged in earlier, seemed to have brought Miranda's insecurities to the fore.
"Hurricane lamps. Flash Harries.” I said, repeating Saleem’s explanation, however unlikely it seemed, "Isn't there a trade lane in that direction? They're lighting the way for the stragglers."
"If only you knew." She said and I knew she wasn't talking about my lack of geographical knowledge of these parts.
She turned abruptly and walked away, descending the stairs into the darker recesses of Dajingha, leaving me alone on that terrace, with those lights on the horizon, thoroughly mystified as to what had just occurred.

I didn't mention our little meeting over breakfast the next morning. By the time I had risen, Saleem had laid out a spread of fresh coffee, sweet roles and cold meat in the main courtyard. Miranda, far from being the cowed and nervous individual I had encountered in the early hours, now seemed alive with conversation. She and Hilljia seemed content to discuss the difficulties involved in preventing the desert from reclaiming this little oasis, in creating the house anew each time they visited. I left them to it. It seemed churlish to ruin the atmosphere by mentioning the events of the night before.

At 11:00 I made my way through Dajingha’s main gate and found myself alone beyond the outer reaches of the house, where the hot and dusty remains of the Selway outbuildings lay spilt upon the desert, as if a shipment of tank traps had run aground and inadvertently fortified this patch of the land. If Dajingha could have been described as a ruin, a comfortable ruin it had to be said, then Selway was now little more than an archaeology, a sun-baked labyrinth of stone corridors and hot little alleyways that led off to one empty chamber after another. The walkways reminded me of ancient Palenque or Thebes. One could have easily imagined Odysseus or a group of young, doomed, Athenians finding such surroundings familiar. To me, Selway had always been a somewhat lonely place, reminiscent of a foundry, or a ship breaker's yard with its rusting iron walkways and stained concrete, a place where the dream of water had gone sour and eventually dried up altogether. The forgotten machineries rumoured to be found within the hot little pumping houses and galleries had always suggested echoes of something long dead, something that we had left behind a century ago.
I turned a corner, catching a glimpse of Dajingha's Northern spinarette. Something up there caught my eye, drew my gaze along the serrated edge of those battlements, a woman, standing to attention, gazing out over the desert. She had her back to me.
Miranda, I thought. Then she turned and I saw that it couldn't possibly be her. A veil of blue silk covered her face, but even beneath this it was clear that her face was the tanned and windswept face of a Unionist, weathered from a life in the desert.
I watched silently, unseen, half hidden by the buttress of a pump house. The tower possessed no means of access. The stone stairs that once wound around the outside had crumbled long ago. I wondered how she had made it out here. Dajingha was miles from anywhere. A trek across the desert would have been nigh on impossible without transportation or convoy assistance, unless, of course, she had been here all along.
A noise off to my left caused me to start. I turned, saw Lucy approaching through the narrow lanes. She had obviously been wandering the walkways, just as I had.
"There's water here," she said, drawing close, "It doesn't look like it, but it’s still here, just beneath the ground. The Water Boards would be interested. All they’d need is a bore rig."
"I won't tell them if you won't"
She looked at me knowingly and ran her hand along the wall.
"This place is old. It's elemental. You can feel it at night, like its part of the landscape."
I smiled, looked back at the house, at the tower, unsurprised to find it empty now, the mystery woman nowhere to be seen.
Out past the line of the trees, dust devils were forming on the dunes, spinning and sizzling, pirouetting over the sand like dancers, vanishing in the warm air only to reform seconds later. It gave the morning a timeless quality, an almost convincing ingredient that intimated that, at Selway at least, things had always been this way.
"I don't understand why Saleem comes all the way out here."
"Isolation," Lucy whispered, "There's nothing here. Apart from the Water Still, the next proper town with any sizable population is Riviere, the Trader Post, fifty miles East."
I looked out upon the dunes, saw the sand shift, alive with the wind, realised that I wasn't looking at anything other than the rapidly receding distance.
"Did you see the Spirit-lights last night?" Lucy continued.
"You’re not swayed by the old myths, are you?"
She shook her head and smiled, "I couldn't sleep. I wandered out here and saw them lined up like landing beacons. Nine of them. Miranda says they're quite common. On some nights, she’s heard the tribal Woomeras warding them off."
"All very ghostly, no doubt." I said.
I wondered what Miranda had been thinking the previous night. In a way, Lucy was right. It wasn't just Dajingha that seemed 'other' it was this whole area. It was something small, something trivial, like the wind blowing in the wrong direction perhaps, or a strange scent that I couldn't quite place. Needless to say, in Babel it would have hardly been noticed. Out here, things were greatly exaggerated. The deserts were almost intimidating in their emptiness.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon carrying out a slow and methodical inspection of the house, trying to convince myself that I was simply interested in its architecture and not in fact trying to discover where the woman I had seen on the tower had been hiding.
I had no doubt that Saleem knew something of her, but asking him directly just drew an expression of ignorance, almost certainly feigned.
“Ghosts,” he said, “The desert playing tricks,” and stalked away leaving me far from satisfied.
There had to be a chamber somewhere, or perhaps a series of them, an area hidden from the guests, somewhere that we hadn’t seen, a place in which an actress could hide when people were present, emerging only when the guests least expected it. I was reminded of Saleem’s innate theatricality, his wonderful sense of the absurd that had so endeared him to the staff at the university. He was a lover of parlour tricks. A practical joke of such magnitude was far from beneath him.
And yet the more I searched, the more puzzled I became. Dajingha was old and nothing had been done to slow the rate of its death. No hidden chambers had been constructed, nothing had been cleared or changed or even renovated. With nothing to arouse further suspicions I gave up, with one last card still to play.
In the quiet of the afternoon, as the others retired for siesta, I went up to my room, took my comm from my bag and ran scan. The result came as no great surprise. The afternoon had been gearing up towards some sort of revelation. The machine read only six life signals. Either Saleem’s Priest-hole was better hidden than I had thought, insulated from scan in a way that was difficult to do even in Babel, or as was more likely, it didn’t exist at all.
In the quiet, simmering heat of the afternoon, I began to wonder if there was some truth in what he had said.

It wasn’t until evening that I emerged from siesta.
I found the others on the terrace, already seated around the large table. Already it was becoming a natural space for congregating. I joined the conversation mid flow, just as Saleem was holding court on his favourite subject. I saw Miranda’s face drop as he began to explain how the ancestral Europeans had interpreted Earth Lights as supernatural beings attempting to lead travellers astray, how the Latin ‘ignis fatuus’ could be directly translated as ‘foolish fire’, how virtually every civilization in history had at some point attached great significance to the lights that appeared on their horizons. I couldn’t decide whether Saleem was trying to influence us in some way, either by drawing us away from the tribal superstitions that had been troubling his wife, or by getting us to somehow endorse them.
“Does the Structural History Office’s official line include for the Spirit Light phenomenon?” he finished.
Gunther looked perplexed. “There are so many ways to interpret it.”
“But you allow for the fact that they are a recognisable phenomenon?”
“Of course, but they could be caused by so many things. If you’re asking me whether the Structural History Office endorses the tribal outlook, then I’m afraid I’d have to answer no.”
“But you have tribal members working for you.”
“We do, from some of the Unions that are more sympathetic to Government. We find that they generally have an easier time with some of the tribes that the likes of, say, I would. However, they know the score. Their beliefs are their beliefs. We’re not in any position to impose a world-view on anyone, especially on people who hold beliefs that are quite the opposite to our own.
“But they work for you none-the-less?”
Gunther nodded, silently.
Saleem continued, without hesitation. “My wife here is a proponent of the tribal theory, aren’t you dear.”
If a look could have taken physical form then, Saleem would have been floored.
“Don’t bring me into this.” Miranda hissed.
“I’m just having a bit of fun,” Saleem chimed, “You remember what that is don’t you?”
There was a pregnant pause. A line had been crossed.
It was Gunther that stepped in, “For the record, Spirit Lights have still yet to be satisfactorily explained or even studied. Ghost Lights, Earth Lights, Ignis Fatuus’, whatever you want to call them, their cause has never been conclusively proven.”
I could have begged to differ then, could have pointed out that the absence of a rational explanation was no reason to embrace the irrational. The moment passed however. It was clear that despite Gunther’s best efforts the conversation had faltered.

Gunther’s mysteries were present again that evening, twelve of them this time, aligned upon a ridge a few miles North of Dajingha like a landing strip on the horizon, seemingly closer than the night before. Despite Miranda’s very public fears, I certainly had no impression that Dajingha was slowly being surrounded. As the party left the table and moved to one of the higher terraces, she remained cowed, unwilling to engage in conversation. If anything, the weekend was turning out to be an interesting lesson in how Saleem and Miranda’s marriage worked, or didn’t depending on one’s pessimism.
I chose a quiet moment in which to speak to Saleem.
“What can I do?” he said, “She believes in the old legends. All part of being raised the tribal way I suppose.”
“And what about you?” I said, keeping my voice to a low minimum.
“What does it matter what I believe? A belief is a belief. Taken in isolation it can have no direct consequence on the outside world.”
I was in no mood for philosophical discussion. I changed tack.
“Do you often get the lights out this way?”
“Virtually every time we’re here.”
“In the same positions?”
“Sometimes, mostly not. Why?”
An idea had been gently forming all afternoon. In the sunlight of the day it had been little more than a hunch. With the fading of the light it had begun to trouble me more persistently than I liked to admit.
“The lights can be faked. “ I said, “The Unions have been known to delineate their boundaries with Glo-bules. A witness might be mistaken. The Flash Harry lamps used by the convoys can look awfully similar.”
“Both of which would either remain fixed in place night after night, or be seen to be moving,” Saleem said, “Glo-bules would be a familiar fixture, a night-time reference point. A convoy would be across the horizon and gone within the hour.”
“Which effectively rules out mistaken identity.” I said.
“What are you thinking?”
I thought for a second, “There may be something far more deliberate behind all this?”

It was the scream that woke me in the early hours of the morning. At first, I managed to convince myself that it had been the lament of a coyote, but with the slow realisation that can only dawn with full wakefulness, I knew that such an explanation was almost impossible.
I emerged from my room to find the terrace empty. I could have gone back to bed then, could have put it down to an attack of imagination, a dream somehow leaking into the waking world, but I heard voices, spiced with the urgency of anger, deliberately kept low so as not to wake us guests.
I set off on a slow perambulation of the battlements, more to appease my own mind that anything else, to lay to rest a sense of wrongness that had crept up on me since my vision of the woman on the tower. I emerged from the first bastion and stopped. A little way ahead, I could see Saleem and Miranda, engaged in what was obviously an argument. Miranda appeared as she had appeared the previous night, dressed only in her over gown, obviously distracted, obviously distressed. I waited, despite knowing that I was witnessing something private, that I was better off going back to my room. I remained, somehow believing that I was privy to something important. The guards had come down, the defences had been lowered, this was Saleem and Miranda.
Miranda threw a gesture into the night, her gaze firmly fixed on the patch of darkness that was Callios. In the low light I could see that her face was streaked with tears.
Saleem said something then, something I failed to catch. The effect on Miranda was instantaneous. It stopped her in her tracks. Quick as a flash, she lashed out. Saleem parried the blow easily, caught her arm in his fist, held it there for a moment, then let her go.
Disarmed like that, robbed of her fight, Miranda stood where she was, trembling like a newborn foal. Then without a word, she turned and stalked off into the night.
Saleem waited on the battlements for a few minutes more, watching the night, possibly regarding Callios. Finally, he cursed and muttered something under his breath and followed his wife down into the house.
I waited until the sound of their footsteps had receded before emerging from my hiding place. I felt prurient, soiled as though I had deliberately stayed to watch something that I had no right in seeing. Whatever Saleem and Miranda's problems were, they were a private matter, of no business of mine.
I stood on the battlements and looked out, let my eyes lazily follow the ruined outline of Callios, that province of darkness that seemed more than ever now to weigh heavily over Dajingha, a shadow blot residing over that ghost lake crater.
Something caught my gaze, held it longer than necessary, a light amongst the ruins, flickery in its corporeal presence, disembodied. A Spirit Light? I recalled the conversation I had had with Miranda, how Saleem had seemed oblivious to his wife’s obvious anxiety. The spark lasted for a few minutes more, then winked out suddenly, leaving the night to snap shut and trick the eyes.

Neither Saleem, nor Miranda, were talking the next morning. Breakfast was taken in almost complete silence. Only Gunter attempted to make conversation with his potted history of the Fossiltown phenomenon, of how Callios conformed almost exactly to what the Structural History Office had euphemistically termed ‘Areas of Government Interest’. I had to remind myself that the only reason Government retained such towns was that the Union movement saw no strategic gain in claiming the ruins as their own. Despite his affableness, I couldn't make myself interested. Feigning tiredness I took myself back to my room and from there, up to the battlements with my optics.
I scanned the rim of the reservoir, following the curve until it blossomed into Callios, the desert giving way to sand blasted ruin. I saw nothing obvious, no sign of Spirit Lights, Earth Lights, no evidence of anything other than sun glinting off metal. Finally, I gave up, realising that only a closer inspection would satisfy my curiosity.

The morning sharpened. The sun cast a furnace wind into the remains of Dajingha and the house suffered in funeral silence, a relic, forgotten amidst so many other relics. By 10:00 it had become painful to look out upon the desert, so brilliant were the sands. Reflections and refractions made the air dance, dazzled the eyes, forced me to look away, to concentrate on more immediate surroundings.
At 12:00, frustrated by the lack of answers, I took a coolant suit from Saleem's storage chamber and descended the sides of the vast reservoir basin, walking out into the burning space where the sun played in great sheets of fire. Intermittent blasts of hot air came flurrying out of the ancient, crumbling bowl, channelled by the gently curved banks until the wind became an express train at full pelt, a jig-saw collision of dust, dried leaves and insect wings. I walked slowly, swiping at the occasional Cicada that came too close, kicking up the dust, marvelling at the little trinkets the sun had left behind when it had evaporated all that water to nothing.
I reached Callios' harbour wall an hour later and ascended a short flight of stone steps up to what had once been a water front plaza. The buildings here were sand coloured, wind scoured and dilapidated. Windows lay open and empty. Much of the plaza was covered in sand but here and there the remains of the decorative mosaics that had once adorned the esplanade could still be seen, now bleached of their colour.
Several of the waterside buildings sported the bizarre stuccoed façades of a Coralate, looking as if a vast sponge had descended and trapped them within. Without regular culling these strange, unintelligent Constructs had flourished, finding a niche for themselves, shaded from the worst of the sun and fed by whatever the wind blew out of the reservoir. A few had obviously learnt how to supplement their diet with a more accessible kind of nourishment. The circle of scattered and broken bones attested to various birds that had chosen a wrong and very final place to perch. I could see some of the higher Clap Traps still in the process of re-tensing themselves, after misfiring perhaps.
I took the optics and looked back at Selway. There was movement there. Saleem and Gunter were standing on the roof of a pumping house, possibly wondering what I was doing. Lucy was sitting on the terrace, sheltering beneath a parasol.
I turned away and walked amongst the cross work of submerged sidewalks, hot little alleys and quietly deteriorating streets where the buildings funnelled hot bakery air in searing torrents. The roads lay cracked and pitted. In places, the shifting dunes had smothered them completely. Only rusting signs, leaning precariously in the heat like parades of old men, picked out their outlines. The town had all the appearance of a painting, a jewel, utterly lost amidst the abrasive expanse of desert and sky.
I wiped the sweat from my brow, sticking close to the buildings, staying in the shadows, occasionally peering through the windows of empty shops, trying to make out the faded objects, quietly mouldering within.
I turned a corner and almost walked straight into the Totem.
It was a Spinning Mary, fifteen feet high and topped with the bright cap of a windmill. It was clear that it hadn't been there for long, and immediately obvious that it wouldn't last for much longer. Whoever had erected it had done so in a hurry. The launch pole had been driven into the sand. With nothing to shore it up, the contraption was now leaning heavily. It would not be long before it toppled and became void, invalid, another victim of the constantly shifting sands.
The spinner cap gleamed, catching the sun as it turned. This one had also been fitted with a small solar motor and an internal light, enabling it to operate at night. Totems like this were usually employed to scare. This was what Miranda had seen from the terrace, a totem, revolving silently in the darkness like a dervish, like a little shining spirit. At a distance the flashes it threw out would have easily been mistaken for Earth Lights.
I looked around. The thing would be almost certainly accompanied by others, no doubt programmed to activate at different times throughout the week.
I walked a further fifty yards until the town stopped dead where it met the desert. Now there was nothing for over seventy miles. I leant against a wall to steady myself, raised the lenses, saw nothing but dunes rolling away towards a horizon, an endless ocean of sand. Then something, something moving, displacing the stillness, a slow and stealthy motion that was never there when looked for, that crept in and out of the corner of the eye and tricked the vision into believing that it was simply a mirage. I scanned the dunes again, following the contours and wind patterns, looking for a line of footprints, anything that might betray a human presence, found nothing to satisfy my growing sense of unease.
The wind shivered past. The desert burned, empty once more.

Perhaps it was by divine provenance, perhaps it was simply by chance that soon after I got back to Dajingha, a wind came out of the desert and cast the house and surrounding streets in a dust shroud so effectively that visibility was immediately reduced. The light took on hints of amber. Shafts of sunlight stabbed the angry dust lanes, knifing in to shift and play amongst the ruins.
I ascended the tower and joined Gunter on the ramparts.
"What are you seeing?" I said softly.
“Hearing,” he said, “listen.”
I listened, heard nothing but the wind, the gentle expansion and contraction of the house, the abrasive hiss of the desert as it slowly ground Dajingha back into sand.
"I don't hear anything."
"Keep listening." Gunter paused, "There."
He was right. There was something, a sound like whale song, a steady, single droning note, carried upon the wind, wrapped up inside it, inside all of that turmoil and bluster.
"The wind,” I said, “playing amongst Selway, coming out of the reservoir.” It was as much to reassure myself than to question him, although in reality I knew that there could only be one explanation. The tribe were employing their Woomeras, warding something off, or welcoming something in. Who could tell? It could easily be explained away as tradition but with the revelation of the afternoon the easy explanations couldn’t quite satisfy.
I looked over my shoulder and saw Saleem's children playing in the courtyard.
"There was a Totem in Callios this afternoon.” I said.
"What?"
"A Spinning Mary, adapted for night use.”
“You think that’s what Saleem and Miranda have been seeing.”
I nodded, “They were out in the dunes too, watching this place no doubt. I couldn't see them clearly. They were wearing chameleon suits."
"Mimics?"
"Possibly."
"Saleem should know."
I regarded the patterns formed by the swirling clouds, spellbound by the strangely organic shapes made by the dust as it blew up against the outer walls or perhaps just puzzling something out.
"Why do you think he purchased this place?” I said.
Gunther shrugged, “I’ve no idea. I can’t even work out why he invited us. He has contacts in the tribes. They could have given him far more information than the Structural History Office has access to.”
“I’m not convinced that they would speak to him,” I said, “All I’ve noticed since arriving is how Saleem and Miranda’s marriage seems to be collapsing around them, and how little Saleem seems to notice. He’s in denial about something.”
“Whatever it is he isn’t sharing it with us.”
“There’s more to this,” I said, “There’s more to this weekend than he’s letting on.”

In a way that could only make me believe that the weekend’s events had been leading up to it, something happened later that evening that brought the afternoon’s discoveries into stark relief.
There couldn’t have been soul in the house who failed to hear the cry that went up just as the sun was beginning to set, the primal shriek that sounded as though whoever had issued it had put every ounce of their energy into letting it loose upon the world. Such was the effect that the weekend had had upon me that I felt only a palpable lack of surprise upon recognising it as Miranda voice.
In the centre of the house, the courtyard had become a honey coloured room. Roiling clouds of dust passed overhead, forming a lid that threatened to descend and fall upon the house in the way that a lion falls upon a calf. The wind had risen. The candles and oil lamps had been extinguished, letting back in the old Dajingha, the untenable ruin that I had seen upon first arrival.
I entered through the Southern entrance and immediately saw Miranda huddled in a corner, her limbs drawn about her, staring blankly at the wall. The blood had drained from her face, leaving her spectrally pale in the ghost light. She was trembling uncontrollably, muttering something under her breath.
Saleem was comforting her. It was perhaps the first time that I had seen him show concern for his wife all weekend.
I heard her mutter the words ‘woman’ and ‘vanished’, spoken in her native, tribal tongue. The rest was an unintelligible string of sounds that I couldn’t understand, let alone begin to translate.
Saleem held her close, rocking back and forth in an effort to soothe her.
“Where?” I head him whisper, “Where did she go this time?”
Miranda looked past him, at the blank external wall. Tears were now forming in her eyes.
I walked over, crouched next to them, put a hand on Miranda’s arm. “This time?”
Saleem glared at me obviously distraught. “Do you see what they are doing? Do you see what they are doing to my wife?”
“What happened here?”
“Ghosts. They taunt us with ghosts. They’re playing with us, toy with us like a cat toys with a mouse.”
I glanced back at Gunther and Lucy, standing nervously in the doorway.
“Saleem,” I grabbed him arm to get his attention, but he shrugged it off. “Saleem, you need to explain what’s going on.” I said it as gently as I could, yet with an intensity to let him know that I wanted answers, that we all wanted answers, that the evening could only lead to explanations.
Saleem shook his head and continued rocking. Laying in his arms, Miranda closed her eyes and began to hum to herself.

After Saleem had settled Miranda in their room, leaving Hilljia to watch over her and the children, I accompanied him out to the rear of his kingdom, to where the walls and walkways decayed into something far older, before they finally admitted that only the desert could win this battle.
"They've been watching me for months." he said.
There was a pause, a terrible chasm of silence that told me that only now, after a weekend of denial and evasion, were we beginning to get to the truth.
"What do they want?"
"What does any union want? Land, the chance to carve out an empire.”
“This place? This house?"
Saleem nodded.
"Why?"
"Because it's sacred to them. You know my background?”
“I know that you were once a Unionist.” I said. It was common knowledge around the university.
“Do you know my reason’s for leaving?”
“You were expelled?” I guessed.
“I was expelled, yes. Pushed out by my own people. Excommunicated.”
I was shocked. “I didn’t realise.”
“People never do.”
“What was their cause?”
“Does it matter? Their reasons have always been as inscrutable as the lines upon a beach. They change with the weather, with the tide, with the waxing of the moon for all I know.”
“So why Dajingha?”
“It’s the one thing I knew they held dear?”
“You knew it was special to them?”
“My tribe had their own records regarding their former dignitaries. They were classified of course, but the day before my expulsion I managed to sneak a look, saw the name Dajingha, saw the history, the special dispensations that they had attached to the place, saw the seeds of an opportunity.
“I didn’t think of the Tenancy Act, not then. It wasn’t until I read about the success that the Structural History Office was having that I realised that it could work in my favour.”
“So you bided your time.”
“I waited four long years while those ten years of abandonment slowly ran out. I made my move the very next day their time limit expired.”
“But what about favour?” I said, “Surely they tried to stop you. What about Claim?”
Saleem looked down, "I received Grievance three weeks ago. They left the note at my office in Babel"
“Do you realise how much danger you are in?”
“Let them come. Let them try to take this place back. It’s a ruin. It’ll be dust before they inherit it again.”
"Which tribe?" I said.
“What difference can it possibly make?"
"I know people, contacts, those who are listened to within the Unions."
"Thank you, but you know now of my history. I was treated with harshness, denied my rights of tribal acceptance, denied my colours and land ownership. This was my sleight back, my display of outrage, my attempt to hurt them."
"By taking this place from under their noses?"
"They reacted just as I had predicted.”
I saw it clearly then for the first time, recognised that what I was seeing in his eye was not the romantic glint of a well liked and loved family man, but a maniac spark that told me he believed whole-heartedly in the righteousness of what he was doing, a righteousness that would eventually destroy him.
“The Spirit Lights,” I said, “Totems. They’ve been surrounding you the whole time, erecting the infrastructure of their revenge. You’re hemmed in. The wheels are already in motion.”
Saleem remained silent.
“Leave Dajingha.”
“Never.”
“At least send your wife away. Get Miranda to safety.”
“Ah Miranda. You see how they taunt those who truly believe?”
“That’s the idea, Saleem, a general build up of tension, a steady ramping up of the fear. They’ll come for you soon.”
“They’ll never touch her. Their codes of honour will make sure of that. It’s me they’re after.”
“You’re fifty miles from the nearest town. Nobody will ever find your body. You’ll just be one more couple swallowed up by the desert.”
“You have an overactive imagination.”
I regarded him for a moment, slowly realising that as a man who had been marked from the very beginning, he was already lost. All that remained now was the uncertainty over what form his fate would take.
Without another word, I turned, and after one last look over my shoulder, one last vague hope that he would somehow relent, left Saleem to keep silent watch over the desert, over the reservoir, over the small scrap of it that he had deluded himself was his by right.

I found Lucy waiting for me in my room, felt the immediate rush of relief that she had chosen to throw her lot in with me. She had been watching from the terrace, listening in through her gain monitor, had heard everything.
“There’s nothing you can do.” She said.
“That doesn’t help me in turning my back on a friend.” I whispered.
I barricaded the door as best I could, hoping that the Mastersons had had the foresight to do the same. Then I found my steel torch, as good a blunt object as any, and hid it under my pillow.
With an apprehension of what the next day would bring playing uneasily on my mind, I attempted to get some sleep.

It was inevitable that I awoke not long after midnight. I lay still not quite knowing what had woken me but knowing that something of the night had intruded upon the internal space of Dajingha.
I got up, removed the barricade, went barefoot out onto the veranda. Looking back on it now it was more like a sleep-walk than anything else. Only part of me stood there on that terrace, not quite knowing, not quite believing what I was seeing, what they had sent.
The courtyard was ablaze with a tremendous light, a pure and wondrous illumination, so bright that I had to shield my eyes against its brilliance. At the centre, floating perhaps two or three feet off the ground, impossibly stable, impossibly real, was a perfect sphere of light, an Earth Light, a Spirit Light, Ignis Fatuu. Then I saw Saleem, and the veil that had been drawn so stealthily over my eyes was suddenly and abruptly lifted.
He stumbled, attempting to distance himself from that unearthly fire. His mouth worked silently, producing a stream of profanities perhaps, or prayers. Who could possibly tell? No sound, reached me.
Like an ancient galleon in slow collapse, he stumbled. His hands flailing, thrashing for something, anything that would break his fall, as if such a thing was still possible, as if such a thing could have saved him. I knew in an instant what it was. I had heard the rumours that he had tried so hard to put a lid on, the whispers of his failing heart, the surgery that had left him almost broke.
I rushed to his side. The luminosity was almost blinding. I shielded my eyes but found that the light passed straight through my hand, illuminating the veins within.
As I stared, transfixed by the patterns that ran across its surface like the refractions of light in a soap bubble or a puddle of oil, I became aware of something else. In that tiniest fraction of a second I saw, or at least I thought I saw, the fleeting glimpse of a face peering out from within that dazzling orb. The vision swam, more ephemeral than anything else, and with that the light vanished in a photographer's magnesium flash, pitching the courtyard back into darkness.
I looked down at Saleem’s crumpled body, called out for assistance, tried resuscitation, tried to massage some sort of life back into his failed heart, aware that there was no hope of medical help out here. Whatever life there had once been within Saleem was now slipping away. I felt for a pulse and felt nothing in return.

Why I hadn’t thought of it before eludes me. Possibly the strangeness of that weekend had done something too me, made me blind to the facts that had been staring me in the face all along. Dajingha laid empty nine tenths of the time. They had had plenty of opportunity to prepare, plenty of time to salt the mine. Plenty of time indeed to deploy concealed Heavy Light projectors, to fill Dajingha with ghosts and increase the unease until the occupants either fled in fear or were driven crazy in the process. I had to applaud their ingenuity. Whilst Lucy and I had been preparing for an incursion of some sort, a physical attack, the descendants of Dajingha had been sharpening an extra deadly weapon, one that would leave no physical trace, one that didn’t even require someone to wield the deadly blow. In the end, Saleem was compromised by something that, despite numerous attempts, he couldn’t even tame.

And so today, Dajingha lies empty once again, a little bit more dilapidated, a little bit more forgotten. The wind blows drifts of sand against the perimeter walls and plays amongst the empty courtyards, its pranks and tomfoolery witnessed only by those who occasionally make special pilgrimage, by those who are charged with making sure that it stays that way. The building stands like a dry skull under the morning sun and somewhere amongst the stones can be heard the calling of wall lizards or the crying of desert birds perhaps, as they fight over scraps of carrion.
That, at least, is how I imagine it.