Johannes Cabal The Necromancer (8 page)

Cabal found he couldn’t lie. Not this time. “I don’t know. But you have my solemn word I’ll try. I think I have an insight into your condition that has only recently been vouchsafed to me. I’ll try. I’m sorry. That’s all I can promise.”

The thing looked closely at him and, after a very long moment, smiled. A rapacious smile to be sure, but one Cabal knew was honest. Even so, the sight of those yellow-white teeth and the thought of what flesh they’d torn made him uncomfortable.

“That’s about the only thing I ever admired about you, Johannes. You’re a man of your word. Or at least you used to be. I’ll take the risk that you still are, soul or no. Very well, I’ll run your carnival for you. Decide what’s fun, lose what’s not. That’s what you want, yes?”

“Yes, exactly.” Cabal couldn’t keep the relief out of his voice. “I need somebody to attend to the day-to-day …” The thing looked hard at him. “I’m speaking figuratively, of course. The diurnal?—nocturnal?— nocturnal running of the carnival. While I attend to the winning of this ludicrous wager. Are you agreeable?”

“Not as a rule, but, yes, you know me, anything for a laugh.”

“Excellent. There just remains one thing. The matter of my personal safety.”

The thing’s eyebrows raised in all innocence. “Why, Johannes. Do you really think I’d hurt you?”

“Yes,” replied Cabal levelly. “Sitting down there in the darkness for eight years …”

“And thirty-seven days.”

“… may have made you feel uncharitable towards me. You may have thought I was somehow responsible for what happened. To you.”

“Oh, heaven forfend that I have such unpleasant thoughts. Just because I was out here in the first place at your insistent request, went down here in the lead because I was ‘more sure-footed,’ was attacked by something thoroughly unpleasant thanks to your incompetence at keeping up with whether the clocks had gone forward or not, and then, in my moment of need, was abandoned. Just because of all this, you think I might have some sort of grudge against you? Dear me. How unkind. I’m quite hurt.”

“Spare me your mordancy. I need your assurance. Otherwise, I’ll just close this door and find another partner. What do you say?”

The thing looked at him with an air of quiet amusement that Cabal didn’t like at all. “What do I say? Let me put it this way.”

The thing blurred. Cabal had a momentary impression of something dark shifting through the light beam far too fast for his eye to register, and suddenly he was on his back with the thing on top of him, his arms pinned to the ground. It had travelled up the twenty feet of steep steps in the pause between exhalation and inhalation. Cabal gulped. He had an awful feeling that might be the last time he might ever gulp, so he did it again in an attempt to calm himself.

“That,” said the thing, nose to nose with him, “is what I say. I could have killed you at any moment since you opened the door. I could have torn your head off and sucked your kicking corpse dry.

“But, despite everything, I’m a reasonable man. I waited to hear why you’d come back after such a long time, when anybody else, even if they were as terrified as you obviously were, would at least have come back at daybreak, when they knew they’d be safe. Would have at least made the effort, even if they knew it was probably hopeless.

“Well, I’ve listened to your deal. A deal. You arrogant little shit. If you had any way of reversing this, you should have come back here to offer it to me with no strings attached. There’s only one thing preventing me from killing you right now, and next time it won’t. Believe me.” It leapt easily to its feet and stepped away. “You have your deal. But that’s all you’ve got. I run this carnival for you, you reverse what happened to me, I walk away.”

Cabal climbed to his feet more slowly. “I thought your clothes would probably be in poor condition by now,” he said, studiously pretending that nothing had happened. “Here are some new ones.” He opened the carpetbag and unrolled a suit and shirt from it. The thing took them, looked critically at the cut, sighed, and started to get dressed. “I’ve also got some toiletries. A comb and brush and some shaving kit.” A thought occurred to him. “You do cast a reflection, don’t you?”

The thing, now beginning to look more human, glanced at him with disgust. “How should I know? Give that here.” He examined himself in the mirror. “Seems to work perfectly well. Another old legend bites the dust. Good grief, I’ve hardly aged. Handsome dog. Still look terrible, though. Ill.” He looked meaningfully at Cabal. “I need feeding.”

Cabal backed away. “You said you wouldn’t hurt me.”

The thing looked at him and smiled slightly. “I said I wouldn’t kill you. You’re not going to die.”

“If you infect me, I won’t be able to help you!” said Cabal urgently.

“It doesn’t work like that. None of the children changed, remember? It has to be a reciprocal thing. It’s the blood mingling that spreads the infection. I just wish I’d thought of that before I tried eating Sophia.” Cabal was looking for the lichgate and was obviously planning to run. The thing stopped following him and spread his hands. “Look, what’s bothering you? It’s the homoerotic aspect, isn’t it?”

Cabal was running. “Well, don’t flatter yourself,” shouted the thing after him. He had been heterosexual before his unfortunate change in circumstances, and now he had doubts that he was even that. “It’s just a transfusion, for crying out loud.” Cabal had almost reached the gates. “You always were such a nuisance,” said the thing to himself, and blurred into motion.

It took slightly longer to get back to the train than it had to get to the Grimpen Burial Ground, as they’d only been able to travel at night. Eventually, the low hills gave way to the marshlands, and soon they were close to the disused rail spur. Even at a distance, they could see the long ridge rising above the surrounding land, and the flare of work lights in the middle of the obviously thinned copse of trees. As they got closer still, Cabal pointed out the train itself, its dark bulk looming ominously along the length of the earthwork.

As he spoke, he absent-mindedly placed his hand on the twin puncture wounds over his jugular vein. He had been relieved to discover that he was still able to go around in the sun with only his hat and dark glasses for protection, rather than the coffin lined with the soil of his homeland that he had feared. Even the detail of the coffin had turned out to be an old wives’ tale; Cabal’s travelling companion had been happy to sleep anywhere during the day, just so long as no ray of sunlight had been able to touch him.

As they got closer still, they started to make out more details. The trees blocking the train’s access to the main line had been chopped down and the stumps torn up. Many of the other trees in the copse had also been felled. The woodpile on the train looked impressively high. The logs would be green and damp, but at least they would fuel the train until it could get better supplied. Great naphtha torches had been thrust into the chippings of the rail bed, flaring into the night sky. Here and there, figures worked diligently and without pause. Bones had created some extra personnel of his own volition. Cabal wasn’t sure if that was good or bad at first, but, given the scale of the work, it couldn’t possibly have been done in time if Bones had only had the dubious services of Denzil and Dennis to call upon. Bones had done the right thing, he concluded.

“My God,” he heard his companion sigh when he saw the locomotive close up, and he was secretly pleased. Bones and his workers had done a magnificent job. The demoniacal locomotive had been carefully cleaned and repainted. The black was so intense that it was hard to say where the train stopped and the night sky started. A thin red line, the colour of venous blood, ran along the side of the boiler and detailed the cowcatcher and smokestack, the only concessions to colour. But it was the first car after the fuel tender that caught the eye. Painted in reds and yellows against a blue-and-black background, the name of the carnival curved and twisted in extravagant fairground curlicues, ornate yet instantly readable. His companion stopped and laughed.

“You were very confident, Johannes,” he said.

“I knew if I couldn’t get your help it was a hopeless case. Alternatively, you’d kill me. Either way, it couldn’t do any harm to anticipate.”

Bones spotted them and stepped down to the edge of the track. “Hi, boss! How do you like her?” He gestured up at the board. “‘The World Renowned Cabal Bros. Carnival,’ just like you asked.”

“Excellent work, Mr. Bones. I knew I could rely on you. Incidentally, I’d like to introduce …”

His companion stepped forward, smiling, and held out his hand to Bones. “Horst Cabal. Delighted to meet you.”

IN WHICH CABAL APPLIES HIMSELF WITH MIXED RESULTS

Johannes Cabal sat at his desk and watched his blotter rock. Across from him, a large clothes chest lay in the angle of the wall. It was long and exactly the sort of furniture that makes avuncular uncles—the worst kind— point and say, laughing, “Ey up! Have you got a body in there?”

Of course he did. Inside lay the body of his brother, Horst, on a layer of blankets, cold as clay but irritatingly handsome with it. Horst’s effortless charisma had always galled Cabal deeply, and the discovery that he even made a fetching cadaver once he’d had a chance to clean himself up a bit was almost an insult.

Cabal widened his eyes, blinked a little, coldly exterminated an infant yawn at the back of his throat. The sun was almost down, he realised. Standing, he went to the window. The countryside slid by, glowing red beneath a clouded sky. They were leaving the flat marshlands and starting to climb into the low hills to the north. He watched the sunset for a minute longer, searching for what he’d once found beautiful in them. Then, turning, he returned to the desk. Halfway there, he paused to listen to the locomotive’s whistle.

The black train surged into a darkening horizon. Now and then, its steam whistle screamed, a lost and lonely sound with an undertone of shuddering horror and menace like Grendel calling for his mother. Up front, on the cavernous footplate of the locomotive, Dennis and Denzil took turns pulling on the whistle cord. They had been equipped with overalls and nice Casey Jones hats and looked the best they had ever looked. Now Denzil watched with an authoritarian eye as Dennis picked up logs and lobbed them into the firebox. It was going well, Denzil thought in the detached way of the fairly dead. It was pretty close to the way he’d thought before Cabal had murdered him, so the adjustment had been easy. He was secretly glad that he didn’t have to eat human brains. Steak and kidney pudding made him queasy enough. Admittedly, he liked his meat cooked fairly rare now, but that was probably more the effect of the exalted circles he was moving in. Eventually, he was sure, he’d be on steak tartare, which was pretty damned sophisticated and no mistake. He sniffed the air. Despite the occasional strand of wood smoke from the green logs, the air was pure and cool. Yet he could distinctly smell cooking. It was probably all this thought of food. Then he noticed that he was leaning directly against the side of the firebox and his left forearm was probably closer to “well done” than was normal for a forearm. If it had been a steak, he would have been inclined to send it back to the chef with some harsh comments. As it was, Denzil said his first word since his change of lifestyle. It wasn’t a nice word.

Behind the locomotive were carriages and boxcars full of equipment, flats, things that would pass for people in a bad light, and things of more reliable description. Horst had worked indefatigably through the nights of the last eight days, studying what they had, throwing bits of it away, creating anew, drawing up plans, rotas, schedules. During the days, Cabal had implemented them. Sometimes he might make changes to the commission of a task, but never to its purpose. He had to trust Horst implicitly. At first, mindful of squandering away the ball of Satan’s blood resting down in Hell, he’d asked why some decisions had been made the way they had. Why that form of sideshow barker, why this kind of concession, why that sideshow over this? “Well, look at them,” Horst had said, lifting up two signs, one from the “accepted” pile and the other from the “firewood” stack. Cabal looked. One was for Marko the Moulting Man, the other for Layla the Latex Lady.

“They both sound ridiculous beyond words. No, I have no idea why anybody would want to see either.”

“You’re dead right about one of them. Marko here”—Horst had hefted the sign—“is a man with hair that falls out. It doesn’t fall out to order, or leave interesting patterns, or grow back on command. Marko’s only abilities are to bung up plug holes and make himself unpopular in furniture showrooms.” The sign was thrown back in with the firewood. “Layla, on the other hand, is … well …” He had looked closely at his brother and decided he was wasting his time. “People just like that sort of thing. Trust me.”

And Cabal had to. Horst knew what people liked, he always had. He had cut a swathe through the social circuses of school, then university, and then adult life. Men admired him, women adored him, and his younger brother had loathed him. Loathed him for his easy manner, for his extended circle of friends and the utterly, utterly loathsome way that the world behaved as if it really did owe Horst Cabal a living. He changed jobs, even careers, frequently, and it always worked out. His parents made a lot of Horst, who never had to fear that their new son would supplant him in their affections. No chance of that, thought Cabal bitterly. He’d had to work hard for their attention.

“Penny for your thoughts,” said a voice behind him. Cabal turned to find Horst sitting up in his box. The sun had gone down while he had been thinking.

“I was just remembering how much I used to hate you,” he said, and walked back to the desk.

“Honesty. I like that. Usually. I knew you resented me, but hated? Oh, come on, Johannes. That’s strong.”

“Water under the bridge, I believe. May we attend to the matter in hand?” He unfolded a map and indicated a town on it. “Merton Pembersley New Town, our first port of call. We reach there just before dawn. I need to be sure that we can deploy effectively.”