Johannes Cabal The Necromancer (7 page)

The door opened with a low whining growl to reveal a stone stairway, barely wide enough for a coffin and bearers to descend. A pale, preternatural glow faintly illuminated the steps, apparently generated by a phosphorescent lichen. It seemed to cover everything in a thin patina, disconcertingly producing a light so dim that his eyes couldn’t be sure it was there at all. Like an afterimage seen on the inside of the eyelid, he could make out the edges of the steps, the stones stained with ghost light, and something at the bottom of the stairway that might have been shattered pieces of wood.

Out of sight, around the corner, something moved across the floor, across fragments of coffin that shifted and scraped.

The steady sound of the crickets and the whippoorwills and frogs croaking out in the bog ponds stopped abruptly. The crow launched itself from his shoulder and headed for the gate, emitting a solitary worried “Kronk!” as it did so. Cabal looked around peevishly.

“So. It’s like that, is it?” he said quietly. Lifting the dark lantern up, he opened the shutter fully and threw the light of the bright acetylene flame down into the depths. Whatever was moving stopped immediately. Cabal cleared his throat in the ensuing silence.

“I’ve come back,” he said. Down in the crypt he heard a sharp exhalation, almost a hiss. It sounded very nearly human. “I have a proposition to make,” continued Cabal. Nothing. Cabal leaned forward, placing his hand on the doorframe. “D’you hear me? A proposition.” Still nothing. Cabal’s finger started tapping on the frame. “I know damned well that you can hear me. We can talk like grown-ups, or I can just lock you up again, throw the key in the handiest bog, and forget all about you. It can’t be much fun down there. Imagine it for decades. Centuries.” He heard movement again, but it stopped almost instantly. “Right,” said Cabal. “That’s fine. If that’s your attitude, then I hope it keeps you good company. You’re going to need it. Goodbye.” He made as if to close the door.

Down below, the thing moved again. Out into the circle of light it came, creeping slowly on four thin limbs like a great spider. Dishevelled and ill defined, it crept or crawled through the wooden fragments until it was at the bottom of the stairs. Cabal reduced the light from the torch a little. He found he had trouble looking at that awful thing.

“There,” he said with a confidence he didn’t feel. “That’s better.” The thing in the crypt brought its head up sharply at the sound of his voice, and Cabal recoiled slightly under the withering gaze: a gaze that swept up towards him from faintly luminescent eyes alight with a hatred of chilling intensity. Cabal became aware that, despite the coolness of the night, he was sweating. This was much harder than he’d thought it could possibly be. The thing coughed gutturally, as if making its throat work for the first time in years.

“You bastard,” it said. Its voice was gravelly with disuse. “You utter, utter bastard.”

Cabal blinked. He hadn’t expected quite this amplitude of enmity. “How’s Sophia?” he asked, working for time. The thing never looked away.

“Dust. Like you should be.” It lowered its gaze. “Like I should be.”

“You got her, then? I knew you would.”

The thing made a noise that could have been a cough or a laugh.

“Oh, yes. I got her. Too late to do me any good.”

“Were any of the others …?”

“No. Why should they be? She never killed anyone that way. Always those idiotic murders. Ironic, they were meant to be. Ironic. The children, she didn’t want to harm them permanently. The others down here were just corpses. Or at least they didn’t squeal when I ate them.” A pause. “I got hungry.”

Cabal heard the note of unconscious apology in the voice. Good, there was still some humanity left there. Perhaps this could be resolved after all.

“As I said,” he continued, “I have a proposal to make to you.”

“A proposal.” The thing made the noise like a cough or a laugh again. “I always expected you to come back. I always hoped you’d come back. To release me, rescue me. Now you turn up with a proposal. You haven’t changed at all.” The glowing eyes focussed on Cabal’s face again. “Why did you abandon me? I thought your nerve had gone, but now you make me wonder. Perhaps you just left me salted away down here for some time in the future when you might need me. Was that it?”

Cabal thought of the way his guts had wrenched when he’d heard the scream from below all those years ago. He remembered how the stone-and-iron door had felt under his hand, how it had sounded as he slammed it shut, closed the hasp, and locked it with the padlock they’d brought with them for emergencies. He remembered running in an ecstasy of fear, falling over the stones and leaping back to his feet in single paroxysms of panic. He remembered running until his lungs had burned inside his chest like a furnace, falling in the long grass, and sobbing until the sun rose again. Most of all, he remembered the voice calling behind him, muffled by first the door and then the increasing distance, until the ends of words became indistinguishable. He still knew what they were. “Johannes! Help me! Help me!” He breathed deeply until he was sure that he could speak without his voice trembling.

“Something like that,” he lied evenly. “But what happened, it was never planned.”

“The sun went down a full hour earlier than we’d planned for. You were the one with the almanac. How could you make a mistake like that?”

“The clocks had gone forward. I hadn’t reset my watch. It was a simple oversight.”

“You don’t make mistakes like that,” hissed the thing with palpable loathing. “You never made mistakes like that.”

“I made one this time,” replied Cabal sharply, distraction making him snap. “I’m only human.”

The coughing laugh again. “How nice for one of us.” The pause grew until it became embarrassing.

“My proposal. I’ve—”

“I’m hungry,” the thing interrupted. “How long have I been down here?”

Cabal did the calculation in the time that it took to blink. “Eight years. A little over.”

“How ‘little over’?”

“Thirty-seven days.”

“Eight years and thirty-seven days.” The thing thought for a moment. “I’m very hungry.”

“I’ll find somebody for you,” said Cabal impatiently. “Can we get on now?”

“You’ll find somebody for me?” The laugh was losing the coughing element, but only to replace it with a hard cynicism that Cabal found far more threatening. “Have you any idea how cheap that makes you sound? From amateur necrothologist to pimp. You have gone up in the world.”

“Necromancer,” corrected Cabal without thinking, and immediately regretted it.

“Don’t give yourself airs. We discussed that, remember? To get that sort of knowledge you’d have to … Oh, Johannes. You didn’t?” The thing gasped with disbelieving joy. “You did! You idiot!” The thing started to laugh, a full-throated laugh that made it double up with glee. “You moron! Nothing’s worth that.” The thing rolled around in hysterical laughter, too hysterical for comfort.

Cabal’s lips had drawn into a thin line. “It was necessary.”

“For what?” The thing was on its back, the laughter slowly ebbing. “For what? You’ve no idea why you do this anymore, have you?”

“The same reason as ever,” said Cabal quietly. The last dregs of laughter died abruptly.

“It’s been over eight years, Johannes,” said the thing disbelievingly. “You’ve even made the sacrifice. I thought you must have failed.”

“I haven’t tried yet. I have to be sure I can succeed. There’s no second chance. It might…” Cabal faltered. “It might already be too late.”

“I can’t help you. It’s already too late for me. You might as well lock me up again and walk away.”

“No,” said Cabal firmly. “I need your help.”

“The last time I helped you, I ended up with an extended tenancy in somebody else’s crypt. Y’know, I don’t feel really very motivated to help again.”

“I think you should.”

“What? Help you or feel motivated?”

“Both. I think I might be able to reverse what happened to you.”

“You think you might. Boy, positivism like that has just got me fizzing with enthusiasm. How?”

“The … disease … that you were infected with contaminates the soul. I’ve had a lot of experience with that area recently, including the authorities that deal with them. I might be able to get you a cure.”

“There’s that ‘might’ word again.” The thing sighed. “All right, what do you want me to do?”

“I’ve …” Cabal looked for the best way to phrase it, but they all sounded ridiculous. “I’ve recently come into the ownership—temporary ownership—of a carnival.”

The thing looked at him with open disbelief. “You? You? A carnival? They haven’t changed the definition while I’ve been away, have they? A carnival is still a place where people go to have fun, isn’t it?”

“I believe that’s their purpose.”

“With all the best will in the world, Johannes, you’re as much fun as a leper at an orgy.”

“Why are all your similes sexual? That always irritated me.”

“You’ve answered your own question. A carnival? What possessed you to buy a carnival?”

“I didn’t buy it. I’ve just borrowed it. For a year—less now. It’s part of a wager.”

“A wager. Will wonders never cease?” The thing shook its head. “You don’t bet, you’re no fun. This doesn’t make any sense.”

“The wager is—”

“No, don’t tell me. Let me work it out. I’ve had little enough to amuse me all this time. The highlight was the spider races. I used to eat the losers. Then I’d eat the winner so he wouldn’t get cocky. Anyway, let me see if my brain still works.” It paused, deep in thought. “You’d never have made a wager unless it was for something that you wanted incredibly badly from somebody who would never willingly part from it. So whoever this other party is must be the one who can’t turn down a pleasing bet. They must have made the terms—you’d never have suggested something involving a carnival. That suggests somebody with a sense of irony—that word again—or at least a sense of petty sadism. Who does that remind me of?”

It didn’t need to think for long.

“Oh, Johannes,” it moaned in exasperation. “You utter idiot. This is to get your soul back, isn’t it? Don’t you know anything? You can’t beat him. He only bets on certainties.”

“So people keep telling me,” replied Cabal, growing exasperated himself. “Well, I say ‘people,’ but that’s a fairly loose term. I need my soul back. That’s not open to negotiation. I took the only deal he would offer. Take it or leave it. I took it. Perhaps he can’t be beaten. I don’t know, nor shall I until I give this the best I can. And if I fail, it won’t be through lack of will or defeatism setting in. I’ll be able to look Satan in the eye and say, ‘I did my best, and it came pretty close. And while you just sat down here on your fat, sulphuric arse, I stretched for the impossible, so don’t imagine for a moment that this is your victory, you smug, infernal bastard.’” He stopped, breathing heavily.

“Well,” said the thing, “I’m glad you’ve got your gracious loser’s speech all worked out in advance, because you’re going to need it. What exactly are you supposed to be doing with a carnival anyway?”

“It’s one of the diabolical carnivals, like the Dark Carnival or the Carnival of Demons.”

“Does this one start with ‘D,’ too?”

“The Carnival of Discord. It was mothballed, apparently for reasons of internal politics. Can you believe it? One would have thought immortal beings would have better things to do.”

“Pointless and time-consuming. Seems perfect for passing the millennia. Carry on.”

“The wager is to garner a hundred souls in a year.”

“A hundred.” Cabal noticed something unfathomable in the thing’s voice. “A hundred souls.”

“I know. It’s a tall order.”

Cabal thought he heard the thing sigh.

“So why are you here? Why aren’t you tearing up and down the highways and byways relieving the great unwashed of their souls for, I assume, the usual beads and mirrors?” it said.

“I … don’t actually have a working carnival, per se. I’ve got a lot of equipment in a fairly poor state of repair, and the wherewithal to fix it up and provide staff.”

“Sounds lovely. Don’t forget to send me a Kewpie doll.”

“A what?”

“A Kewpie doll. A cheap doll that you can give away on the concessions as a prize.”

“Concessions to what?”

The thing shook its head slowly. “You’re going to have to rewrite your loser’s speech, Johannes. Get rid of the bit about coming pretty close. You haven’t the faintest idea what you’re doing.”

“I know,” Cabal accepted. “That’s why I need you. You know what goes on in places like that. I don’t. I need your expertise.”

“Expertise? I never worked on anything like that.”

“But you visited some. I remember that you visited some.”

The thing heard the note of desperation in Cabal’s voice. Somewhere deep within itself, something human softened just a little. “Well, yes, I went to carnivals whenever I could. Used to hang around them. Even considered joining one. Perhaps I should’ve. I wouldn’t be here now.”

Cabal shrugged. “For all the good it does, I’m sorry I left you. I thought you were dead. Or worse.”

“Right on both counts,” said the thing bitterly. “I still don’t see why you’ve come to me, though. So I visited a carnival or two. It hardly makes me an expert. There must be people who can be hired to do this, who actually have some real experience?”

“I don’t think that degree of knowledge will be necessary. In many respects the carnival will run itself. It has few overheads—no wages, and the prizes, food, and drinks are provided. We don’t even have to worry about taxes, as the place will cease to exist before the end of the next tax year, and—despite their reputation for tenacity—I doubt even tax collectors will descend into the Infernal Pit just to collect the revenue. What I really need is somebody who understands people. What they want when they come to a carnival. Besides, finding somebody with a better curriculum vitae might well founder on the vexed ‘Incidentally, the carnival’s sponsored by Satan, and we’re far more interested in stealing a hundred souls than in making money’ issue.”

The thing grunted in amusement. “I take your point.” It crouched in silence for some moments, before raising its head to look Cabal in the eye. “Do you really think you can undo”—it gestured hopelessly at itself—“this?”