Cabal smiled absently, his brain whirring. This was none of his doing, but why would they believe that? No line? How could their arrival have been planned, in that case? Penlow on Thurse was clearly marked on the map as an operational station. His smile never wavered as the seconds drew out. He could feel his teeth beginning to dry. There was a cough among his audience to remind him that they were waiting. Eyes on him. He couldn’t think. Penlow was their last possible stop, their time was almost gone. He had to find two souls here, and now the whole place was set against him. A bead of sweat was forming on his right temple; he could feel it quite distinctly. He needed to think of a reason for the odd goings-on. Now. Right now. Right this instant … now. The instant fled by and he still couldn’t think of anything. He knew damn well who was behind this. Look out for dirty tricks? The dirty deed had been done before they ever got here. He wondered if he could save the box of contracts if it became necessary to leave hastily, pursued by a torch-bearing mob.
“Torch-bearing mobs move surprisingly quickly,” he said out loud. They looked at him oddly. Marvellous, he thought. Why not put ideas in their heads?
“What my brother means is that, only a few months ago, we made a serious enemy.” Horst’s measured, reassuring tones immediately started to weave their own brand of magic. People always wanted to hear what he had to say. “It would seem that he has reached here before us and intends us to be besmirched by the same necromantic brush as himself, the cur. This, I think, would be the epitome of ironic revenge to his corrupt and diabolical soul.”
There was some confused murmuring from the crowd. “What are you talking about, son?” asked Barrow.
“Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you my brother, Johannes Cabal — Vanquisher.” There was a definite capital “V” there. “Vanquisher of the foul wizard Rufus Maleficarus!” There was a gratifying intake of breath. Rufus had long been a darling of the tattier newspapers.
Even Barrow seemed to have heard of him. “Just a minute,” said Barrow. “I thought Maleficarus was dead?”
“Slain by my brother’s own hand in a deadly duel.”
“So how’s he doing all this business here if he’s dead?”
A reasonable question, but Horst had always got by in life on I per cent perspiration, 99 inspiration. “My dear sir, what barrier is death to a necromancer?” The gratifying intake of breath was now released as a hateful hiss. Suddenly Cabal feared Horst was going to expose him. He’d been so distant recently.
“Rufus Maleficarus was an evil man. Now it would appear that his malign influence extends from beyond the grave. When we leave here, we shall postpone the rest of our busy schedule to go back to where he hangs from a gibbet and burn his corpse, as we should have done in the first place. Not even a necromancer can survive the purifying flame.” There were sage nods from the sort of people in the crowd who always nod sagely when somebody else says something clever.
Barrow had an eyebrow cocked as he appraised this intelligence. He wasn’t about to fall into the trap that Horst had set. That was left to another. “Why didn’t you burn him while you had the chance, eh?” asked Joe Carlton, who could always be relied on to ask the obvious.
Horst spread his hands in supplication. “We had the torches lit when along came Maleficarus’ mother.” He adopted a reedy, aged voice. “‘Please don’t burn my boy,’ she said. ‘He’s been very wicked, I know, but he’s my own flesh and blood. I … I don’t think I could bear it if you burnt him.’ Well, I was all ready to burn the evil sod anyway when Johannes, my brother, held back my arm and said, ‘No, Horst. He may have been a necromancer, a murderer, and a thrice-dyed villain, but he was still this woman’s son. She’s suffered enough. More than enough. Leave him for the crows and let us be on our way’” Cabal looked at his feet with pure, disbelieving embarrassment. Luckily, it was close enough to humility to pass. “So we left poor old Mrs. Maleficarus sobbing by the feet of her own little Rufus,” continued Horst.
“Please stop,” whispered Cabal. “This is killing me with humiliation.”
“You think I should skip the bit where you run back and press the whole month’s takings on her? If you insist,” whispered Horst. Then, louder, “So, if our crime is that my brother could not bring himself to break the heart of a poor widow any more than her evil son had done, then we plead guilty.” He took off his hat and hung his head penitently. There was a pause. Then the crowd went mad.
Cabal was bundled up to shoulder height and paraded up and down the platform several times by jubilant supporters. From a harbinger of doom he had become a conquering hero with a heart of gold, in the space of a few mendacious sentences. Such, he mused, is the fickleness of the mob. Horst should run a newspaper.
After he had worked up a hand full of cramp signing autographs, Cabal happened to notice Barrow standing to one side, arms crossed. Watching him. It seemed that at least one person had proved resistant to Horst’s public-relations exercise.
“You don’t seem impressed,” said Cabal. “Why should that be? Didn’t you hear my brother? I’m a hero.”
“I don’t know what you are,” said Barrow. “Hero? I wouldn’t know. Did you kill Maleficarus?”
“Yes,” said Cabal. He looked around to make sure nobody was eavesdropping. “Yes, I killed him. I shot him three times.”
“Why?”
“Why did I shoot him, or why did I shoot him three times? I shot him three times to make sure he died. I killed him because he was in the way.”
“In your way.”
“If you like.”
“And what did you do with the others?”
“Others?”
“That poor mob of fools he had following him around, the others who escaped from the asylum.”
Cabal smiled. “Have you ever heard of ‘care in the community’? You’re entirely right; they’re harmless. They just needed some direction in life.”
“They’re in your carnival?”
“As staff, I assure you. My freaks are all volunteers.” The smile slid away into nothing. “By and large.”
Barrow snorted. “I understand you.”
“No. No, you don’t. You read between the lines, but what’s written there defeats you. Might I make a suggestion, Mr. Barrow?”
“You can make it.”
“In two days, we will be gone from your lives. You can let us do our jobs and bring a little excitement into the lives of the people here, and everybody will be happy. No unpleasantness, no ill-feeling.”
Barrow pursed his lips. “If I could really believe that, I’d be delighted to agree.”
“But you can’t.”
“But I can’t. I don’t believe this story about a dead man climbing down from his gibbet just to make a balls of your public relations. Not for one single, solitary second. What kind of idiot do you take me for?”
Cabal tilted his head at the excited townsfolk, who were washing up and down the length of the carnival train. “That kind of idiot,” he said. “It’s unfortunate for both of us that I’m wrong.” Riggers were beginning to unload the flats from the train. Cabal and Barrow watched them. “I have a long night ahead of me, Mr. Barrow. You’ll forgive me if I take my leave of you, I’m sure.”
After Cabal had taken a few steps down the platform, Barrow called after him, “I’d be happier if you took leave of my town.”
Cabal stopped and looked back at him. “Your town? You’re not your brother’s keeper. Remember that.”
“Is that it? No threats?”
“Threats, Mr. Barrow, are the preserve of blowhards and cowards. I am neither.” He walked back to Barrow until they were toe to toe. “I don’t even give warnings.” He turned on his heel and walked away.
“By and large,” said Barrow, too quietly for Cabal to hear. Then he turned, too, and walked back towards town.
As the two walked away from each other, they were both thinking exactly the same thing: “That man is going to be trouble.”
CHAPTER 11
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in which Cabal preys upon misfortune and there is unpleasantness
It was an utter impossibility that the carnival be up and running the night it arrived. Yet, with less fuss and much less time than putting out a picnic table, a full-fledged carnival featuring thirty sideshows, stands, rides, and exhibits was lit up and functional. Nobody could explain how it had been done; by coincidence, the crowd of two hundred and fifty citizens at the station were all facing the other direction at the time. They all jumped in unison as the steam calliope started up behind them, all turned, and said minor variations of “Oooooh!” one less “o” here, one more exclamation mark there.
“A first-night special offer!” cried the tall, dark-haired pale man with the charisma, while his brother, the tallish, blond pale man who only ever seemed to deploy a smile as an offensive weapon, stood behind him, arms crossed. “Entry free!”
The good folk of Penlow on Thurse had been brought up to believe that it was rude to refuse a gift, so they politely filed in under the archway of gleaming painted woodwork and light bulbs. Barrow walked until he stood beneath the arch and looked up. For a second, it seemed to say Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here, but after a moment it definitely proclaimed how the crowned heads of here, there, and everywhere regarded the carnival as ideal entertainment for those of inherited money and limited gene pool, this being regarded as a fine advertisement in some quarters. Barrow decided that he had been mistaken but that his subconscious was trying to tell him something. Forewarned and forearmed, he entered.
Johannes Cabal, necromancer and unwilling carny-huckster, watched the crowd and fretted. This was their penultimate night, and things just weren’t… right. He couldn’t put his finger on it. The crowd seemed to hang together, moving like an extended family from tent to ride to sideshow. Beneath the constant calliope music and the cheerful banter of the barkers lay near silence. People just stopped and looked and moved on. There was a small sensation when somebody bought a toffee apple from a concession stand. “What’s wrong with them? I thought I was supposed to be a hero now. Why are they still so suspicious?”
Horst appeared at his elbow, where he most definitely hadn’t been a second before. “They’re nervous. I may have given them an explanation for the station, but that doesn’t mean that they have to like it. This place reminds them that something weird has happened, something inexplicable and out of the ordinary. Face it, Johannes, I doubt anything out of the ordinary has happened in this place since some passing peasant thought it was a clever place to start a town in year dot. Did you see that fuss over a toffee apple? They couldn’t have been more astounded if we were selling lark tongues in aspic. This place may be a washout.”
“It can’t be a washout. It’s the last port of call. Two souls. I have to get two souls or this whole thing has been a waste of time.”
“And ninety-eight souls.”
“Ninety-nine. My life is forfeit.”
Horst looked at him sharply. “What? You never said anything about that!”
“Strangely, it wasn’t the sort of thing that I like to dwell on. What does it matter? If I don’t get my soul back, then I can’t continue my researches.”
“You just leave a trail of metaphysical disaster behind you, don’t you? You made a mess of your life, my life, however many people you doomed in the eight years and thirty-seven days I was stuck in the cemetery, and now you want to spread the good word to another hundred. And for what?”
“You know damn well.”
Exasperated, Horst shook his head. “No, no, I don’t.” He wagged his finger in his brother’s face. “I used to know. I even sympathised, idiot that I am, and look what it got me. But for what now? I don’t know. I don’t think you do. I think you just carry on this way because if you stopped and asked yourself, ‘Gosh, Johannes, why am I such a total shit to everybody?’ I don’t think you’d be able to give yourself an honest answer.”
Cabal flared. He slapped Horst’s hand to the side. “I don’t care what you think. I am supremely unconcerned by what you think.”
Horst shrugged. “Great. So long as we understand each other.”
“No, no, we don’t understand each other. Or at least you don’t understand me. You never concentrated on anything in your life. You don’t understand what it is to be dedicated. You don’t understand what it means to go to sleep and wake up with the same thought and for that thought to always be there.”
“That’s not dedication.”
“No?”
“No, that’s obsession.”
“And this is your big effort to understand me, is it? A label. I shouldn’t have expected anything but.”
“It’s not a label. Look at yourself. Ye gods, Johannes, you were going to be a doctor! You wanted to help people.”
“Doctors. Frauds and quacks. Just trying to hold back the dark and full of pat excuses when they fail. Too stupid or too scared to bring back the light. Not me. Not me! I’ll be the modern Prometheus no matter what I have to do, no matter how dark I have to make it before I can find the secret.”
“And what if there is no secret to find? What if it’s beyond mortals? What then? What about you?”
“There has to be,” said Cabal, but he seemed very old and very tired as he said it. “There has to be.”
Horst took his younger brother by the shoulders. “Listen to me. We’ve got twenty-four hours — less, allowing for the sunlight — but we’ve got time. We can think of a way out of this.” Cabal just blinked uncomprehendingly. “These contracts always have a hole in them somewhere. I think it must be traditional. We burn the contracts, get you out of this wager, and then find a hole in the contract you signed when you sold your soul.”
“There’s no hole in my contract,” said Cabal. “I signed my soul over in return for the tenets of necromancy.”
“And that’s all?”
“I don’t know. ‘The secret of life after death,’ the usual stuff.”
“That’s what you asked for?”
“Something like that.”
“Then that’s easy! Don’t you understand? You wanted the secret of life after death. All you’ve got is a few formulae that allow you to bring people back as parodies of what they were. And you’re the one who’s had to do most of the work to get that far. They failed to deliver their side of the bargain!”
“That’s just quibbling with definitions.”
“Oh, come on! You think Satan would miss an opportunity like that if the situation were reversed?”
“What would I want with Satan’s soul?”
“Not what I meant. We’ve got him. It’s a philosophical minefield!”
Cabal had a brief mental image of Aristotle walking halfway across an open field before unexpectedly disappearing in a fireball. Descartes and Nietzsche looked on appalled. He pulled himself together. “But I was given the power to invoke the formulae. That was the real boon.”
“It’s got you nowhere. Give it up. Start again.”
“I … I don’t know.” He tried to work out how much research it would require to recoup mundanely the ground that he had lost to the diabolic. It seemed a very great deal.
“Johannes. Do it. It’s redemption.”
To Horst Cabal, his brother, Johannes, looked like he had when he was six and his dog died. The same numb inability to understand what had happened. Johannes Cabal looked at the floor and the night sky and, finally, at his brother. He seemed very lost. “I don’t know,” he whispered.
Horst opened his arms. He hadn’t held his little brother since he was a child. They had never been close, and Cabal’s admission that he’d hated Horst had explained a lot. But even now and even here, blood was still thicker than water.
“Hey! Boss!” Bones came out of nowhere. In the moment that Horst’s gaze flicked from Johannes Cabal to Mr. Bones and back again, his brother had vanished and been replaced by Cabal the necromancer.
“What?” snapped Cabal.
“I think we got a live on
e,” Bones said, grinning widely. Horst sighed. The moment had gone. Up until now, he’d quite liked Bones, with his easy smile and bonhomie. Up until now, it had been very easy to forget that he was nothing more than a tiny bit of Hell that had been brought to Earth and put in a boater. That smile had changed everything. They were talking about taking somebody’s soul, and it was a cause for delight.
“Where?”
“The penny arcade. She’s just wallowin’ around and lookin’ pretty damn miserable. We gotta have somethin’ she wants.”
“The arcade? About time that place earned its keep.” Cabal strode off with Bones at his heel.
Horst blurred and was there before them.
The penny arcade had consistently proved a good attraction to people wanting to get rid of spare change but had performed badly in the soul-reaping stakes. Now, as always, it was packed with children and teenagers playing the bagatelle boards and one-armed bandits, testing their strength against a brass arm, and watching the macabre events of the penny tableaux. Horst looked around frantically. They would arrive soon, and he would have lost his chance to get the prospective victim out of here. Impeded by bodies, he was unable to move at high speed and was forced to push politely through the throng. He couldn’t see anybody who fitted the bill until, finally, a mob of pubescents gave up trying to win fluffy toys from the crane machine and moved away. She was young, probably not even twenty, and Horst had rarely seen such an expression of ingrained misery. Here she was surrounded but untouched by people, her unhappiness a tangible thing that must have seemed to her almost deliberately ignored by others. Horst moved firmly through the mass.
“Excuse me, madam.” He was at her elbow. She looked up. Too many nights without sleep. Too many nights crying. He looked towards the entrance. He could see his brother and Bones approaching. He didn’t have enough time for subtlety or even just to mesmerise and steer her out of there. “You seem unhappy. May I be of assistance?” She just smiled wanly, uncertain. “I am Horst Cabal, one of the proprietors. It pains me to see one of…” Cabal and Bones were almost at the entrance. “Look, what’s wrong? Can it be fixed with money? We’ve got more money than we know what to do with. I can give you as much as you need.” Her smile faded, and she just looked confused. He had no more time. He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. “Whatever you do, do not give in to temptation. Promise me!” He leaned back to find her looking at him un-comprehendingly “Don’t give in,” he hissed, and moved away.
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