Johannes Cabal The Necromancer (10 page)

A sticky-fingered tugging at his coat broke him out of the reverie. He looked down to see two small boys, perhaps eight or nine years old. “What do you want?” he asked curtly.

“When do the rides an’ stuff start goin’, mister?” asked the snottier of the two, wiping his nose on his sleeve for punctuation.

Cabal looked over towards the gate. The fences had been up for hours. He looked back down at the boys.

“How did you get in?”

The less snotty produced a seriously crumpled piece of card and showed it to him. “We got commply-mennary tickets.”

“I doubt that,” replied Cabal, taking the card between finger and thumb. He straightened it out a little and read, “Cabal Bros. Carnival of Wonders! Complimentary Ticket. Admit One. Valid One Night Only.”

“I got one, too,” said the nasal boy, and offered Cabal a ticket that not only was crumpled but also appeared to be seeping.

“That’s all right,” said Cabal, returning the other boy’s ticket. “Might I ask who gave you these?”

“’e did,” said Snotty, and pointed past Cabal.

Cabal turned slowly. “Good evening, Horst. I didn’t realise that it was time for you to get up.” He eyed Horst’s clothes. “Where did you get those?”

“Oh, just something I asked the haberdashery to run up for me. Do you like it?” It was an extraordinary suit in imperial purples that scintillated slightly under the electric lights. The frock coat was cut long over a delicately embroidered waistcoat in silver, red, and black. Horst tipped the dark-purple top hat for effect, tucking a silver-headed cane under his free arm.

“Oh, yes,” said Cabal without enthusiasm. “You certainly look the part.”

“Get along, boys,” said Horst to the children. “Sundown’s when it all starts with this carnival.” He favoured Cabal with a sidelong glance as he said it. The boys ran off to the main body of the fairground, where rides were beginning to come to life and barkers were beginning to attract small straggly crowds in front of the exhibit tents. Horst watched them go with a smile before looking at Cabal.

“You certainly don’t look the part. Accountant, yes. Carnival proprietor and showman, no. I’d see the haberdashery tomorrow if I were you.”

“You’re not me,” said Cabal. “You run things up front, I run them from behind the scenes. That was the deal.”

“Yes,” admitted Horst. “That was the deal.” He smiled a smile that Cabal had seen make spiders run for cover.

“Oh, no. Oh, no. Let me preempt any amusing little surprise you might have for me with the words ‘No, not in a thousand years.’”

“We miscalculated the number of sideshows we’ve created.”

“How so?”

“We seem to have a sideshow/barker disparity that needs addressing.”

“Barkers. The ones who stand in front of the shows and shout about how wonderful they are, yes?”

Horst nodded, smiling quietly. “Yes.”

Cabal didn’t like the way this was going. “Too many barkers?” he ventured, with rare optimism.

Horst’s smile broadened. Cabal’s frown deepened.

“No. No. No. If you have trouble with any of these terms, you can consult with me in my office.”

“You don’t want to get your soul back, then?” asked Horst with an appearance of innocence that might have been applied by grease gun.

Cabal bit his lip. “It’s only one sideshow.”

“But it might be the one. You never know. We don’t have that many, after all.”

Cabal made a show of thinking it over, but he knew Horst was right. There really was no choice. “Very well. For tonight only.”

“‘For tonight only.’” Horst held his hands up to an imaginary sign. “‘Thrown out of the best universities, excommunicated from all the most popular religions and many of the obscure ones, fresh from his recent engagement in Hell, we present Johannes Cabal, Necromancer!’ Toot toot toot!” He mimed blowing trumpets.

“You’re a constant font of hilarity, aren’t you?” said Cabal, unsmiling. “And I’ll have you know that I was never, ever thrown out of any of my universities. I always left of my own accord.”

“And always in the early hours of the morning,” added Horst. “Look, Johannes. Despite everything, I’ve always sort of liked you. Back in the days before you abdicated from the human race, your heart was usually more or less in the right place. This will be a doddle. The House of Medical Monstrosity has been set aside for you. You know about the human body—how it works, how it doesn’t work, how, if it isn’t working, you can get it sort of ticking over again. Sort of.” He laughed, and Cabal knew he was thinking of Dennis and Denzil. Cabal bridled: that damn test batch was going down the plug hole the instant he managed to develop something better. “Anyway, it’s something you have an enthusiasm for. Believe me, talking about something that excites you will excite others. It communicates.”

“It communicates?” echoed Cabal. He didn’t believe that for a second. Far too many boring people had cornered him in his youth who were fascinated by things very boring indeed. Their enthusiasm had not “communicated” in the slightest.

Horst’s expression of uncertainty showed he wasn’t so sure of the principle when it involved his brother. “I’ll draw up some notes for you,” he said in a conciliatory tone.

“Ahem. ‘Roll up, roll up. Prepare to be shuddered to the very core of your being. Prepare to witness the most horrible tricks Mother Nature has played upon humanity. Prepare to enter the House of Medical Monstrosity.’” Cabal paused from his notes and looked up. He had an audience of precisely one, a small girl who was sticking her tongue out so hard at him it might actually be hurting slightly. Cabal could only hope. He drew a deep breath and continued.

“‘Within the walls of horror behind me lie the most terrible mutations, the most grotesque freaks, the most fearful occupational injuries. See.’” He belatedly realised he’d been missing the exclamation marks. “‘See! The man with the exposed intestine. See! Alicia and Zenia, the two-headed girl. See!’” He couldn’t understand why he had to keep repeating “See!” He couldn’t imagine the average rube wanting to touch, smell, or taste the show’s stars. Not the average rube, anyway. “‘See! Mr. Bones, the Living Skeleton.’” It had been very good of Bones to make up the numbers. In fact, he had leapt at the chance to lounge around in a thong all evening.

Cabal looked up. There was still only the small girl. She was still sticking her tongue out. Her mother bustled over.

“There you are! I’ve been looking all over! And what have I told you about pulling faces? Your face will stick like that if the wind changes.”

“Certain surgical techniques would do the trick, too,” observed Cabal.

The woman looked up at him with an habitual animosity. “And what do you do?” she asked. “You look like a funeral director.”

Despite his black clothes, Cabal knew he looked nothing like a funeral director. He could never have managed the sanctimonious expression if he’d had a month to practice. “Madam,” he said. “Or may I call you ‘florid termagant’?”

“Ooo la!” she said, delightfully outraged. She patted her resinous perm. “I’m a married woman.”

“Forgive me. May I say, he’s a very lucky man,” lied Cabal. His face moved into something that, by strict dictionary definition, was a smile. The girl whimpered and tried to hide in her mother’s skirts. “Madam, the exhibition behind me is the House of Medical Monstrosity. See!” He found his place in his notes, drew breath, and let it out again. He put the notes away.

“Madam,” he started again, “behind me is a freakshow. An exhibit of the unfortunate, the despised, and the outcast. An exhibit where all such are drawn together to give you, a normal member of the general public, a chance to jeer and laugh at those less fortunate than you. Imagine! You may be unhappy about the shape of your nose, the line of your jaw, the way your eyes stick out. But all this fades into insignificance when you see a man whose spine grows out of the top of his head. Unsightly facial hair? We have a bearded woman! Weight problem? We have from one end of the spectrum to the other: a living skeleton, and somebody so astoundingly, grotesquely fat that we haven’t actually been able to discern his or her sex. If you have any feelings of inadequacy whatsoever, then here is the place to come, to point and say, ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I!’”

A crowd was growing. A young woman nervously held up her hand. “I … I … I have freckles.”

Cabal gestured fiercely over his shoulder with his thumb. “We have the Dalmatian Boy. Next?”

A man called, “I have a bit of an overbite.”

“Then gaze in delighted wonder upon the Human Shark. Next!”

“My nose is a little too pert,” said an almost stereotypical blond woman on the arm of a wealthy man.

“It can’t be as pert as Simone Sans-Nez the Noseless Girl’s. Next!”

“I’m ginger,” called a teenage boy.

“So you are. Yes, my friends! The House of Medical Monstrosity! Slake your thirst for abomination and abnormality! Feast your eyes on the people who really are worse off than yourselves! Draw self-esteem from their abasement!” There were a lot of people in front of him now, but nobody wanted to be the first to buy a ticket. He needed a sheep to lead the flock. He flicked his gaze quickly over the rapturous, vacant faces until he saw one whose gaze was locked on one of the lurid paintings that decorated the front of the sideshow. Cabal glanced quickly at them, following the man’s line of sight. Then, with quiet confidence, he looked back out into the crowd in no particular direction. It was a complete coincidence that his eyes met the man’s as he said, “And, for the first person to buy a ticket, the chance to have your photograph taken with Layla, the luscious, lissom, lithely Latex Lady.”

“I’ll buy a ticket!” shouted the man unnecessarily loudly, the sweat showing on his lip. “Me!”

Cabal was beginning to realise that this year could well turn out to be an interesting experiment into behavioural psychology. He doubted Marko the Moulting Man would have turned the trick.

“You, sir! You’re a very lucky man! Here you go! Ticket number one!” The spiel was beginning to come along as well. You just had to give the poor fools the impression that you were doing them a favour and they ate from your hand. The money was handed over, and the small piece of pasteboard exchanged. The man was almost feverish with excitement. Cabal wondered what he would give in exchange for something more than a photograph. He began to think that he’d let the stationmaster off very lightly indeed. He addressed the crowd.

“But don’t be disappointed! Throughout the evening, we’ll be offering other spot prizes based on your ticket number, so … so …” There was only one thing left to say. “Roll up! Roll up! Come one! Come all! Tell your friends that you were brave enough, that you were bold enough, to enter the House of Medical Monstrosity!”

And so, its welcoming smile widening until the fangs showed, the carnival began its first night.

IN WHICH CABAL PLAYS WITH DOLLS AND HORST BROADENS HIS VOCABULARY

Fairs and carnivals are not, by nature, profound experiences. They are there to amuse and distract, to draw the citizens from their grey workaday lives into something that has a flavour of the extraordinary. The lights dazzle, the sideshows amaze, the rides excite, the stalls frustrate, but all pleasantly. It is a jolly pickpocket and a charismatic confidence trickster. The rubes … the suckers … the customers know full well that their wallets and purses are slowly deflating every second that they walk upon the fairground, but the customers … the suckers … the rubes would have it no other way. They do not mind being taken for a ride, as long as the ride is fun. This is the nature of fairs and carnivals.

The Cabal Bros. Carnival was something special, though. Something unusual. Something different. Whereas a normal carnival is a shallow, ephemeral experience intended to take average persons out of the mundane world and fool them—for as long as they are prepared to be fooled—into believing that fun really does travel the highways and byways as a bolus of giggles and glee, the Cabal Carnival wore that belief as a mask. It was, however, merely a facsimile of a façade. Behind the wide, welcoming smile was a mantrap baited with desires and delight, pleasures and popcorn, hedonism and hot dogs of dubious content. Satan, who was after all something of an authority in matters of temptation, was quite right when he had said that the carnival lowered the defences of those who walked through its gate. Everybody comes to the fair to have a good time in the full expectation of being ripped off at some point. All that was different here was the scale of the loss.

But all this is theory. Examples are more salutary.

“We’re here to have fun.” It was said in a tone that indicated that the alternative was a split lip.

Rachel hoped it wouldn’t come to that; the last one had only just healed. “I am having fun,” she said, and smiled. It wasn’t a very convincing smile, but it showed sufficient compliance for Ted to uncurl the fist that had unconsciously formed at his side. His hands spent a lot of their time balled.

He looked around. Before them spread the carnival, a whirling chaos of sound and light and smells that promised so much. Calliope, neon, and the scent of fresh popcorn created a new world: a place of wonders and excitement and fun. Yes, its true function was to tempt to contentiousness, to blasphemy, argumentation, and murder, but you could also win coconuts.

Ted regarded it all with the sour expression of a man who expects disappointment, and usually deals with it by putting the source in the hospital. He held out his hand towards Rachel, and she took it quickly, allowing herself to be drawn through the gates and onto the fairground proper. As they walked through, they passed the farmer on whose land the carnival was set up.

He stood, thumbs hooked into his waistcoat pockets, looking very pleased with himself, smiling and nodding at everybody who paused at the gate to buy tickets as if he owned the carnival, too. In truth, he was keeping a headcount, partially to make sure that he wasn’t cheated out of his rent, but mainly for the sheer pleasure of running the steadily increasing number through some simple mental arithmetic and revelling in the hefty sum that popped out starboard of the equals sign. He would doubtless have been less happy if he had known what was waiting for him in the shrouded future, at a time shortly after he left his deathbed. If he’d been under the impression that the Ministry of Agriculture was addicted to unnecessary paperwork, first contact with Arthur Trubshaw would set things in perspective.