Atishfishan

By Brian Craddock

Joseph Moore and his companion Natheer travel to the deserts of Pakistan for an unusual find: arcane carvings have been discovered on the rampart walls of the Ranikot Fort, also known as The Great Wall of Sindh and believed to be the world's largest fortified wall. The enigmatic chief geologist, Martin Van de Castele, leads the team and a military convoy into a mysterious cave where Joseph and Natheer fear creatures of unimaginable terror await.

This story is fashioned after Lovecraft, and is a sequel to the events of Masala Nightmares in the collection The Dalziel Files.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brian Craddock
• Release date: Mar 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005241162

Brian Craddock

Brian Craddock is the author of Eucalyptus Goth (Oscillate Wildly Press, 2017). The Dalziel Files (Broken Puppet Books, 2018) is his first collection of short stories, many of which were originally published in Steve Dillon's Things in the Well anthologies (Between the Tracks, Below the Stairs, Behind the Mask, Beneath the Waves).He is also published in Midian Unmade: Tales of Clive Barker’s Nightbreed (Tor Books, 2015), and Book of the Tribes: a Tribute to Clive Barker's Nightbreed (OzHorrorCon, 2013). His essay on Clive Barker appears in The Body Horror Book (Oscillate Wildly Press, 2017).Brian has also written for the puppet webseries The Hobble & Snitch Show (2015/2016), wherein he directed and performed.In the late 1990s, under the pseudonym Dakanavar, Brian Craddock wrote and illustrated eleven underground comics centred on the Goth subculture in Australia (respectively titled "Crimson: Riot Goth" at 7 issues, "Grave Company", "Caduceus", "Dead/Dead", and "Alida: The Reluctant Goth"), and contributed to several zines and small-press publications.

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ATISHFISHAN

Text © 2019 Brian Craddock

Published by Brian Craddock for Broken Puppet Books at Smashwords

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Deep in the mountains of southern Pakistan resides – if legend is to be believed – a foul creature, surviving on a diet of lizards and beetles, hiding itself from the daylight world, reticent for contact with humanity. Gora Bashar, the locals call it. It waits for a legion of vengeful monsters to unleash themselves upon the Earth. Such is the substance of the tale I have to recite.

It began when Natheer and I arrived by plane in Karachi, despotising us into a metropolis as equally mad but generously more dystopian than any city of India. Merely crossing the lawless streets proved to be chancing with death itself.

We’d come to Pakistan to report on a curious and ancient construction, something grand in the scheme of both architecture and history. It was called the Ranikot Fort, positioned in the deserts of the Sindh district further north. Natheer insisted on carrying the luggage for us both, his youthful vigour easily managing what I might have laboured under. The taxi’s windows refused to close, the driver informing us his air-conditioner was also broken, going on to tell us at length the disparities between his wages and the cost of repairs, presumably in the hopes I’d tip far more generously than which would be considered fair. Natheer was quick to let me know there was a likelihood the train we were risking our necks for on the roads of Karachi would likewise be without the modern comforts. There was little choice other than to