Johannes Cabal The Necromancer (29 page)

Barrow put his cup down. “Why do you hate death so much?”

Cabal seemed to rein himself in. “I don’t hate death. It’s not a person. There’s no grim skeletal figure with a scythe. I try to avoid hating abstracts, it’s a waste of effort.”

“That’s not what it sounded like a moment ago. You sounded like a man who would kill death if he could.”

Cabal checked his pocket watch. “I despise waste. That’s all.”

“That’s not all,” said Barrow, and instantly knew that he’d overstepped a line.

Cabal got to his feet and straightened his coat. “Good day, Mr. Barrow,” he said with stiff formality. “I’ve enjoyed our little chat, but I have things to attend to back at the carnival. If you will forgive me?” He turned on his heel and went out.

Barrow shook his head. He had the strongest feeling that, whoever Cabal really needed forgiveness from, it wasn’t him. He’d met all sorts in his time, but never anybody quite like Johannes Cabal, and he was beginning to think fate had been kind to him up to now. He dropped some money on the table and followed Cabal.

Outside, he saw Cabal walking determinedly in the direction of the station. He was debating whether to follow when he was arrested by a cry of “Dad!” He turned to see his daughter, Leonie, leaving the hardware shop. He instinctively knew that she had been buying the hinge for the shed that he had complained about yesterday with the words “I’ll have to get around to that one day.” With Leonie, “one day” was “tomorrow,” except on those occasions when it was “today.”

She came over, smiling with the joys, and Barrow, who had the occasional pang of existential angst, was reassured that his life had been worthwhile. Oddly, though, something lay darkly over the familiar happiness that Leonie inspired in him, like a single small but impenetrably dark cloud on the face of the sun. He turned his head slowly in Cabal’s direction.

Cabal was standing stock-still on the far side of the village green, staring at him. The intensity, the unblinking directness of the gaze unnerved Barrow.

He’d once been faced with a rabid dog, an animal that he knew could kill him slowly and agonisingly if it bit him just once. They had stared un-blinkingly at each other, not ten feet apart, as Barrow slowly, and by touch alone, broke, reloaded, and closed his shotgun. It had continued to stare at him as he brought the gun to his shoulder and sighted carefully down the double barrels. The sensation that he had felt, a horrible sensation of the dog’s burnt and chaotic mind communicating its madness to him through its gaze like a basilisk, still woke him in the early hours in a cold sweat. As Cabal stood motionless, staring, glaring, some of that sensation returned to Barrow, and he shuddered involuntarily.

The realisation that Cabal wasn’t looking at him at all released him from his paralysis. The realisation that Cabal was actually looking at Leonie proved unexpectedly confusing. Unable to draw any conclusions, he left his next action to conditioned reflex. Perhaps unfortunately, his inclination was towards politeness.

Taking Leonie’s arm, Barrow walked over to where Cabal was apparently rooted to the ground. “Mr. Cabal,” he said. Cabal’s eyes never deviated from Leonie’s face. “Mr. Cabal, I’d like to introduce you to my daughter, Leonie.”

“You own the carnival!” said Leonie, recognising the name. “Oh, I love fairs!”

“Mr. Cabal has very kindly given us tickets,” said Barrow, patting the pocket that contained them.

“Thank you, Mr. Cabal,” said Leonie. “I really do adore carnivals. We only tend to get the little travelling ones around here, though. Nothing you could call a big professional affair. I am so looking forward to tonight.”

Cabal looked fixedly at her. Smoothly, as if possessed by a will of its own, his hand moved to his breast pocket, withdrew his spectacles, shook them open, and put them on. Seeing the world through smoke-tinted glasses seemed to shake him out of his paralysis of will. “Thank you, Miss Barrow. I’m … we’re very flattered by your interest.” He spoke slowly and with curious emphasis, as if his mind were elsewhere. Barrow watched him closely. Leonie was a good-looking girl—even allowing for a father’s pride, that was plain to see—but surely Cabal wasn’t smitten? The thought of a romantic streak in the sinister Mr. Cabal was disconcerting, even distasteful, especially if his own daughter was the focus of interest.

“How long are you here?” asked Leonie.

“Here,” repeated Cabal tonelessly. “This is the last night.”

“Then where are you going?”

“Then it is the end of the season,” said Cabal. There was a finality in the way he said it that Barrow doubted was deliberate, and that was all the more suggestive for it.

Leonie was talking again. “Well, we mustn’t miss our chance. You can be sure we will be there tonight, Mr. Cabal.”

Barrow smiled, and it didn’t even get within scenting distance of his eyes. He was distracted by the sure knowledge that there was something going on that he didn’t like. He could taste one of his famous hunches, and it held the flavour of a beached whale. He sincerely regretted introducing Leonie to this man. He sincerely regretted accepting the tickets. He sincerely regretted that he would have to disappoint Leonie by making her stay at home tonight.

ut why?” It was later, and they’d gone home after saying goodbye to Cabal and Leonie, once again reassuring him that they’d certainly be there tonight. Barrow had just mentioned casually that he would prefer it if she didn’t go after all, hoping vainly that she might just accept his wish. No such luck. It was shaping up into one of their rare, and all the more unpleasant for it, arguments.

“Nothing ever happens around here,” she said. She seemed hurt, as if he were asking her to stay out of sheer malice.

“There’s something wrong about Cabal. About his whole carnival. Things are happening. Unnatural things.”

“But you know why that is,” said Leonie, as if he were being deliberately stupid. “Rufus Maleficarus the necromancer. He’s trying to ruin the Cabal carnival. We know that.”

“Maleficarus is dead,” pointed out Barrow.

“But he’s a necromancer. That’s the whole point. Life after death after life. They should have burnt him, but they didn’t. Now he’s come back.”

“Do you really believe that?” Life after death after life. Something in the words provoked the glimmer of an idea. In Barrow’s mind, cogs of pure thought started to form from the chaos of unordered data.

“We’ve seen the newspaper. It happened at Murslaugh. The Cabal brothers are heroes there. They’re not making it up.” She shrugged and shook her head at his stubbornness. It was a gesture she’d learned from her mother. She didn’t know it, but it was a knife in his heart every time she did it.

He blinked the pain away and tried to marshal his arguments. They weren’t having it and remained an undisciplined mob. “Look, I’m not arguing about this. You are not going.”

“What?” She couldn’t believe he could be so intransigent. Of course, the crowning point was that she was a grown woman and he really couldn’t stop her if she decided to go. That, however, wasn’t nearly so important to her that minute as understanding why he was even trying. “What happened to hearing both sides of an argument?”

“All right, let’s hear your side.”

“My side? My side is that I want to go to the carnival because I want to go to the carnival. It’s fun. I would like some fun. It’s your side that’s lacking.”

“I’ve told you …”

“You’ve told me that you don’t like Mr. Cabal. Fine. I think you’re being silly, but if you insist, I’ll avoid him. I don’t want to go for his fascinating conversation.” She saw her father fight a smile. Cabal had been all but monosyllabic when she’d spoken to him. “I just want to go on the Ghost Train, throw balls at nailed-down coconuts, and have a bit of fun. What’s wrong with that?”

“There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just…”

“What can possibly happen?” She looked at her father and felt her anger cool a little. When all was said and done, he would die for her, and they both knew it. “What can possibly happen?”

Barrow sighed. Here was the crux of it. “I don’t know,” he admitted, “I really have no idea. Maybe nothing. But, but”—he took her hands in his—“maybe something. Try to understand. When I was still with the police … No! Hear me out!” Leonie had rolled her eyes at the mention of his old job. When he was satisfied that he had her attention, he continued. “When I was with the police, I came across all sorts. The criminals, nine times out of ten, it was obvious. They forget what morality is—real morality, that is. The stuff that lets us get along with each other. They can mimic it like a chameleon can mimic the colour of leaves, but that’s all it is. Mimicry. They’ve forgotten what it is to think like everybody else, and they get things wrong. Little things, but you get so you can scent them out. Little mistakes. Everything that they do, everything they say is riddled and rotting with mistakes.”

Leonie looked at him, worried. He couldn’t tell if she was worried by him or worried about him. “Are you suggesting that Johannes Cabal is a criminal?” she said.

“No, not at all, not in the way that you mean. I actually think he’s a very moral man. I just don’t think that he’s using the same morals as everybody else. I think …” This was it. He’d painted himself into a corner, and a thousand lazy reporters and ever-so-sincere politicians had rendered the only word that he could use comically melodramatic. “I think … Johannes Cabal… is evil.”

Leonie looked at him in disbelief. Evil. The word had lost its power through overuse. Now it just meant incomprehensible to the uncomprehending. Barrow wanted to explain the complexities of it, this language of suffering that he had learned at countless crime scenes and in too many interview rooms. The serial killer and the serial burglar shared far more than either would like to admit: the need that has to be fed until next time, the need that results in the suffering of others, the easy justifications. They shouldn’t have left it unlocked. They shouldn’t have gone down that alley. They shouldn’t have been dressed like that. Barrow had heard it all, and he’d always smelled the sour smell of a failed human. Cabal, though, he was of another order altogether. There was almost a nobility in the corruption of the spirit that Barrow was sure was there, was sure that he had detected. There was something different, though. If he could just put a name to it, he was sure that he would understand Cabal all the better. Evil, in as far as he had experienced it so far, was always selfish. It was always just an extension of the most stupid behaviour of the infant playground: “It’s mine because I say so. It’s mine because I take it.” Belongings, sexuality, life. But not in Cabal’s case. Barrow played with words mentally as he tried to explain to Leonie what he meant. Cabal’s was a (what?) evil. Clinical? Displaced? Remote? Deviant? Altruistic?

Altruistic? How can evil ever be altruistic?

“It’s against its nature,” Barrow said, thinking out loud.

“Evil?” Leonie was still stuck on the word. It wasn’t one her father used often. In fact, she couldn’t remember him ever using it at all. “Are you serious?”

“I’m serious when I say I don’t want you to go to the carnival.” He tightened his grasp of her hands. “I’m scared for you. I’m scared for every person who walks through those gates.”

“You are serious.” She nodded slightly, and her trust in him closed the distance. “I won’t go.”

After she had gone, Barrow reached into his pocket and studied the two tickets. “You,” he said to one of them, “are surplus to requirements.” He threw the piece of pasteboard onto the fire. “You,” he said to the survivor, “are going to get me inside that carnival tonight. Then we shall see.” He went to the window to reread the printing on the ticket.

As he turned his back on the fire, he failed to see the ticket that he had thrown there flutter up the flue. It seemed miraculously unburnt. Indeed, as it made its way up the chimney, even the scorch marks faded away. Three-quarters of the way to the chimney stack, it made a difficult turn and headed for one of the upstairs fireplaces. Leonie sat by the window, looking off across the fields in the direction that she knew the carnival to be. Unseen, the ticket fluttered across the room and landed on her desk. It found itself a good, obvious position and practised looking alluring.

IN WHICH THE CARNIVAL OF DISCORD OPENS ITS GATES FOR THE LAST TIME AND THINGS GO TERRIBLY WRONG

Cabal passed the rest of the day trying to keep his mind off a variety of things. Failure. Damnation.

Leonie Barrow.

First, he worked on his conjuring. The card vanish he’d used to dispose of the extra ticket he’d offered Frank Barrow had been technically correct but an artistic disaster. It would never do. He sat down with a deck of cards in front of a mirror and started vanishing them methodically and steadily until his pockets and sleeves bulged. Then he shook them out and started again. And again. And again. Then, for variety’s sake, he started vanishing and immediately reproducing them. The Queen of Spades flickered in and out of existence in his hand. He watched his hands closely in the reflection. He’d made a point of angling the mirror so that he could see only his hands in it. He had no desire to see his face.

When the cards started getting dog-eared and suggestively curved, like Tuscan roof tiles, he turned his attention to other objects on his desk. Pens, pencils, and a ruler mysteriously vanished and then made triumphant returns. He’d been pleased with how well he’d managed to make that woman’s confession vanish in the police station.

Thinking of it, he pulled both it and her contract from his pocket and took a moment to examine them. Nea, she was called. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever come across a Nea before. It was a pleasant name, and he let it run with abandon around his mind for a moment. Then he drew the little key from his waistcoat pocket, unlocked the desk drawer, and placed her contract beneath the others in the box. At the top, this left a single blank form. By hook or by crook, it had better be signed before midnight. He put the box away and carefully locked the drawer before returning his attention to the confession. He skimmed it and was quietly impressed at how accurate it was, given her disturbed state of mind at the time. He practised making it vanish a few more times before tearing it into ribbons and feeding them to the stove in the corner.