The Fall of the House of Cabal

by Jonathan L. Howard

  Cabal led the way for the little entourage of three police officers and Barrow to the arcade. He felt in his right-hand jacket pocket for the bunch of keys he knew would be there and unlocked the big, good-quality padlock that sealed the entrance and stepped aside. ‘Be my guests.’ The party entered and stood in a huddle near the door while Cabal went around and opened the shutters. As each shutter opened, bars of daylight lanced in, but there was something theatrical about the way they illuminated the airborne dust within the arcade. Why was the inside of a travelling carnival’s arcade dusty at all?

  A travelling carnival. The Cabal Brothers Carnival, less widely known as the Carnival of Discord. This place had occupied a whole year of his life. How could he have forgotten that? Through the unshuttered windows he could see the countryside of Penlow on Thurse, looking surprisingly like artfully painted theatrical flats.

  Barrow’s eye lit upon the penny tableaux and he went to investigate, followed by the policemen. Cabal leaned against the wall and affected a nonchalance that he did not feel. It was more like hitting his mark. Barrow studied the row, reading the titles as he moved along it. ‘“The House of Bluebeard,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Court of Ivan the Terrible,” “The Haunted Bedroom,” “Tyburn Tree”. Very Grand Guignol, Mr. Cabal,’ he said disapprovingly.

  ‘It’s what people like, Mr. Barrow.’

  Barrow had arrived at the end of the row, a machine covered with a tarpaulin and with a sign fixed to it. ‘“Out of order”? What’s wrong with it?’

  Cabal had not the first nor foggiest idea. He looked at Barrow and Barrow looked back, tilting his eyebrows interrogatively in a manner not so much inquisitorial as supportive. Cabal glanced around, but there was no worried assistant in the wings clutching a tatty copy of the script, ready to offer a prompt at a beseeching glance. There was just Cabal, Frank Barrow, the sergeant, and two extras dressed as constables. Cabal ventured an ad-lib.

  ‘I don’t know. Something mechanical. Quite beyond me.’

  There seemed to be an almost imperceptible sigh of relief from the others.

  ‘We’d like to have a look at it if we may, sir,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘I don’t think that would be wise.’ He wasn’t just saying it, he realised. It really would be unwise to look at the machine. ‘You have my word there is no machine like the one that you have described. Isn’t that enough?’ He said it with too much emphasis. Surely he had been more reserved the last time he had been here?

  ‘We’d like to see for ourselves, sir. The tarpaulin, if you please.’

  ‘I really don’t think I ought.’

  ‘That’s as may be, sir. But if you’ll pardon me…’ The sergeant quickly undid the tarpaulin and pulled it away.

  The penny tableaux machine was stuck in mid-action. In a cunningly wrought representation of a large and luxurious stateroom-cum-office aboard some grandiose aeroship, a blond man wearing blue-glass spectacles was pointing a pistol at a woman. She was young and attractive, though her face was marked with a calm, sardonic distance, and she wore a gorgeous red dress that made her seem very pale. She was sitting behind a massive white-and-gold desk before a great window made of two large sheets of glass. Upon the desk’s top lay a military revolver.

  From the tip of the man’s gun barrel an almost invisible length of wire ran in a straight line to the woman’s forehead. Not even a quarter of the way along the wire, a bullet was represented with a small length painted black, followed by an explosion of red and orange, and then the rest of the bullet’s track was marked in white. The mechanism was not functioning correctly, however; the ‘bullet’ kept travelling forwards perhaps an inch only for it to be jerked spastically back with a small metallic ping of protest.

  The four men watched the bullet fly forwards and twitch back in silence for some seconds. ‘What’s wrong with it?’ demanded Barrow.

  Cabal did not know, but he knew it mattered. ‘Something mechanical,’ he echoed his own words.

  ‘Fix it.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ It mattered more than anything. ‘I’ll fetch the mechanic.’

  ‘No.’ Barrow stepped close to Cabal and glared at him with full loathing. ‘You fix it.’

  This seemed unreasonable. ‘I don’t know how.’ Cabal glanced at the cabinet. Carefully but not entirely professionally painted, the title ran across the wooden frame above the glass front; The Necromancer’s Tragedy. ‘I don’t know how,’ he said, wondering at what tragedy this might be even as he defined it.

  ‘You broke it. You fix it.’ Barrow was pale with anger, almost shuddering with it.

  ‘Of course. Of course. Right away.’ Cabal fell to his knees on the grimy boards of the arcade floor and took hold of the side of the case. The mechanism cover, a piece of wood two feet by three, didn’t seem secured at all, but came away easily when he pulled on it.

  A chaos poured out. Blood and wire. Springs and sinews. Bones and cogs. It fell into Cabal’s lap, covered it, and yet more came. It was impossible; he gazed at the ruin and could see no way to start a repair, never mind finish it. He looked up at Barrow. ‘I don’t know how.’

  Barrow towered over him, the police officers behind him merging to become a wall of dark blue serge, soaking up the light of an artificial day. ‘She’s dead because of you. Fix it!’

  The red flood was burying him. ‘I don’t know how.’

  ‘Fix it!’ Barrow was shouting at him, spittle raining on the gore and the gears. ‘Fix it, damn your eyes, Cabal! Damn you to hell! Fix it!’

  * * *

  The gun kicked in his hand, and he realised he must have shot Lady Ninuka. Odd that there seemed to be an echo to his shot. Except, no; his shot was the echo to another.

  Count Marechal was fast, but Cabal was sure.

  Somewhere a wire slid forwards a little further, the painted representation of a bullet upon it that much closer to the painted brow of a painted woman in red.

  He turned away as Lady Ninuka threw herself wordlessly across her father’s body.

  He reached down and took Miss Barrow by the upper arm. ‘We should leave now,’ he said in a terse undertone. There was something wrong, something out of kilter with the situation, but he wasn’t sure what. He should get away, and take Leonie Barrow with him. Although, hadn’t he been talking with her father a moment before? And wasn’t Leonie Barrow …

  ‘No! Cabal, we can’t. I can’t.’

  She was looking at the surviving passengers: Herr Roborovski pushed back up against a chair, unable to look away from Satunin’s body; Miss Ambersleigh, hands to her mouth, trapped in incomprehension; Lady Ninuka, her dark lace cuffs darkened further by blood as she held her father tightly. ‘What has happened?’ she asked nobody in particular. ‘What has happened?’

  For his part, Marechal lay with his eyes open and with the calmest expression Cabal had ever seen him wear, his brow now troubled only by a dark hole a mite over 10.35mm wide, the brain behind it forever stilled by the addition of 179 grains of lead. For a moment Cabal thought he saw a length of wire, almost invisible, extending from the wound.

  He grimaced at the image, and saw it was just a trick of the light. There was no wire. ‘They can look out for themselves. Come on. Every second wasted narrows our chances.’

  Miss Barrow was having none of it. She shook off his hand. ‘Why did you come back?’ she demanded through taut lips.

  ‘It wasn’t for you, if that’s what you’re thinking. Are you coming or not?’ They glared at one another.

  It was a moment of the purest horror for both of them. Cabal found himself impulsively leaning forwards and, before he was even truly aware that he was moving at all, he kissed her.

  ‘I’m lying,’ he said, although he didn’t know why. ‘I did come back for you.’

  She looked at him as if he had just slapped her, eyes wide, mouth open in astonishment. ‘What…? What do you…?’

  Then she slapped him, hard enough to rock him back on his heels.

/>   ‘Daddy,’ Lady Ninuka said with faint certainty. ‘Daddy will make everything right.’ Cabal looked at her. He was the only one to look at her. He was the only one that saw. She rocked back and forth, hugging her father, but he was no longer a corpse. Tightly held in her arms was the funerary urn of Count Marechal, ebony with the family crest in gold upon its neck.

  The aeroship lurched harshly to one side, almost knocking Cabal from his feet. ‘The ship is out of control!’ cried Roborovski.

  ‘Oh, my Lord!’ Miss Ambersleigh pointed forwards through the broken window of the salon. ‘We shall crash!’

  Cabal somehow regained his balance, even though the deck was canted over to starboard by some thirty degrees. ‘What? No, this isn’t what happened.’ Yet there it was, clearly visible through the cracked glass, a cliff of exposed rock where the side of a hill had been undermined by a river running by its base.

  Travelling at very nearly full speed, the Princess Hortense drove headlong into the cliff, crumpled, dropped, and exploded as it crashed heavily to earth.

  * * *

  The fire engulfed Cabal as he was tumbled around the aeroship’s salon like a pea in a can. I truly do not remember dying this way, he thought as he tumbled, peevishly.

  Presently, he stopped tumbling and settled down to death. It was cooler than he had expected, and darker. Also, death smelled slightly musty with a distinct note of burning crab oil.

  ‘Well,’ said the voice of the afterlife, ‘how’d you like those apples, eh?’

  Cabal’s eyes opened wide in unpleasant surprise. He was where he had no right, no reason, and no desire to be. He was in the cavern of the Phobic Animus upon the inconstant island of Mormo, a chamber roughly hewn from part of an ancient cave system. Before him was a stone throne, and upon it sat the source of much evil and even more irritation, a thing that sometimes pretended to be a pleasant but dull solicitor called Gardner Bose, Esq., commissioner for oaths, conveyor of houses, destroyer of worlds.

  Cabal could do little but stare at it for an incontinently long time. Then he looked at his hands. They were clean, unsullied by gunpowder residue, grime, or burns. He looked back up at Bose.

  ‘Nyarlathotep,’ said Cabal, more calmly than he felt. ‘You little bastard.’

  ‘Hello, Johannes,’ said Bose, otherwise known as Nyarlathotep, otherwise known as the Crawling Chaos, otherwise known as the Stalker Amongst the Stars, otherwise known as the Eater of Grey Lilies, otherwise known by at least 995 other names and appearances, and likely more. ‘Learned to pronounce my name correctly, I hear. Good for you!’

  ‘I thought,’ said Cabal, crushing down the great and negative emotions he felt at that moment on the basis that it doesn’t do to get into a shouting match with an entity that can obliterate one from the very fabric of space-time with a thought, ‘I hoped you said you were done with me and that we would never meet again.’

  ‘Yes, well’—Bose shrugged—‘what can I say? It was hardly my decision. As far as I was concerned, we were done, you and I. But then—who would have thought it?—you go and get yourself involved with the Five Ways. Now, be fair, old man, even I couldn’t have known that would happen. I could have asked Yog-Sothoth, but it gets all mystical about telling the future, which is—of course—the now as far as it’s concerned, and then it won’t give you a straight answer, which usually doesn’t bother me because, you know, I have quite a subtle mind, and I’m terribly good at the cryptic crossword, but it all gets so very time consuming and, anyway, Yog-Sothoth cheats at cards, too, so I’m not inclined to ask as even I’ve got my limits, and I think I’m getting a little off the subject. Hello!’ Nyarlathotep clasped his hands in front of him and smiled winningly. ‘It is so nice to see you again.’

  ‘Can you give a straight answer to a simple question?’

  Bose/Nyarlathotep rocked his/its head from side to side. ‘It’s happened, now and then. Go on, try me.’

  ‘Is the Trial of the Five Ways your creation?’

  ‘Straight question. Straight answer … yes. I devised it a long, long time ago for some pre-human race or another, and just left it running. It simply is the most terrific fun.’

  ‘For you.’

  ‘Obviously.’ He laughed. ‘You’re wondering if the prize is genuine, aren’t you? Of course you are, I can see the thoughts swirling around inside your comically tiny ape brain. “Oooh, Nyarlathotep big fibber. Maybe Five Ways big fib, too. Oooh.” Well, no. For reasons that must be painfully plain to even the meanest intellect’—here Bose pointed at Cabal with both index fingers and mouthed, Like yours—‘it makes more sense for the prize to be real. Word of mouth, you see? So important. But, it’s a poisoned chalice. Of course it is. Get your dearest wish? No, no, no. It’s got “monkey’s paw” written all over it.’

  ‘I do not recognise the allusion.’

  Bose seemed slightly startled by the admission. ‘Really? Perhaps I haven’t released it into the world yet. I really must get a diary. In any case, take it from me, it’s a stinker. Dearest wishes and utter curses have a lot in common.’

  Cabal glared at him; it was the most he dared. ‘Nevertheless, I shall have that prize.’

  ‘You see?’ Bose clapped his hands in delight. ‘I’ve told you it’s heartbreak and damnation, yet still you’re going for it. I do love humans. They are so stupid. I shall tell you something else, old bean, I’m rooting for you—yes, you!—to win. Ninuka is an open book to me, I’ve seen thousands like her. She’ll use the power to destroy her enemies (which means you, right at the top of her list), bring her daddy back (who will get in the way and mess up her plans because they will both want to be in control), and consolidate her corporeal power (and fail to notice when the rot sets in to whatever governmental structures she sets up and the whole farrago falls down).’

  He feigned a yawn. ‘Tedious, isn’t it? I really could not care less. You … I don’t know. I think you have a secret project that even I haven’t been able to spy. Probably somebody close to you who’s dead? Your father, too? Hmmm, no. That isn’t it, I think. In any case, secret project aside, you have brought along the most interesting people. Ninuka’s original plan was to do it all herself, but she couldn’t crack The One True Account of Presbyter Johannes by His Own Hand. So she tinkered with it a bit, forged a new copy that removed any of the hints that five was an important number in connection with the rite, laid a simple enchantment of geas, as the Irish say, upon the thing so you would decide you needed four little helpmates along when you attempted it, and then left the book in a place she trusted you to be clever enough to find.’ Bose nodded appreciatively. ‘I have to say, I quite admire her as humans go. You certainly fell for it.’

  ‘It was hardly an obvious trap.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have fallen for an obvious trap. Well, apart from that one that got Miss Barrow killed—’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Bose cocked his head and regarded Cabal with a speculative smile. ‘Yes. I thought so. You poor chap. Must pain you to lose her. She reminds you so very strongly—’

  ‘Shut up!’

  Bose leaned back on his throne. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it’s time to conclude our business once more. I doubt we shall meet again, but I’ve been wrong before. To err is human, eh? Good luck, Johannes. I truly hope you win.’

  The lights in the crude clay oil lamps and fluttering from the torches grew dim as all the flames in the room slowly died away. In the moment after the room was plunged into total darkness, Cabal thought he saw Bose’s eyes glowing in a colour that had no satisfactory name in any human tongue. Then the darkness was absolute.

  Cabal waited, but he seemed alone once more. He took a match from the little metal matchbox in his pocket and struck it, but the light seemed hardly to travel at all. He watched in bafflement as the flame shrank quickly, and then he gasped in horror as his strength left him at the same rate. He tried to keep the match burning as long as he might, but it was hopeless. Soon it was gone, and he fell to hi
s knees. He started to fall forwards, but there was something stone or perhaps concrete right before him, and he leaned gratefully against it. Above him, the cave grew brighter, and he looked up, only to see he was no longer in a cave at all, but beneath a starry night.

  * * *

  Ill unto death, he had returned to his strange little isolated house to recuperate, yet could not enter since his front garden was conspiring to kill and eat him. He saw then that his was to be an ignominious death, to slowly shuffle off the mortal coil while propped against the gatepost of his home, mere yards from salvation. It did not surprise him—it is the lot of a necromancer to die, in all likelihood, an ignominious death, and he could only sigh a small sigh of relief that it didn’t involve zombies, because that would have been tiresome. So, necromancer that he was, he settled down to rattle out his last breath in as much comfort as he could.

  There he expired.

  Too late did a potential rescuer arrive, a taciturn figure that stood over the body of Johannes Cabal, and sighed his name with true grief. The figure leaned upon the gatepost in silence for some minutes, then effortlessly lifted Cabal and walked up the garden path with the dead necromancer carelessly slung over one shoulder. At this new presence, the starving unseelie of the garden scattered in fear, because that which is supernatural and nasty knows supernatural and nastier when it sees it.

  The front door was a hefty artefact of English oak and triple locked with a London bar device to resist kicking and battering attacks. The figure, a man, kicked it clean out of its frame without even troubling to put down the body, and entered. He stood for some seconds upon the black-and-white chessboard tiling of the hallway, taking in the ambience of the house. It was not the curious glance of an intruder he turned upon the mundane details of the visible house, but the slow, absorbing regard of nostalgia and memory; this had once been his home. Then, with the resolve of one on familiar ground, he made his way through the hall to the kitchen at the rear of the house, and thence down to the cellar.