Jonathan Howard - Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

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.”

Horst yawned, displaying exaggerated eye-teeth.

“We’ve been through this a thousand times before.”

“Twelve.”

“Whatever. Yes, we can set up in six hours and be ready for sundown easily.” He grinned broadly. “The poor rubes won’t know what hit them.”

On the shelf, the hourglass dribbled sand into the lower bulb. The rolling motion of the train never perturbed the flow so much as an iota.

The stationmaster looked hard at the train and then harder at Cabal.

“You can’t park that there,” he said finally, and started to walk back to his office. Cabal walked quickly after him.

“Well, we have to stop somewhere. We’ve got a carnival to set up,” he said, and smiled. The stationmaster stopped, saw his expression, and shied away.

“Look, mate, you have to have permissions. You can’t just bung your train up somebody else’s siding and expect to get away with it.”

“Why not? Nobody else is using it.”

“Aaaah, but they might.”

Cabal knew then that he was dealing with the kind of official that he always lost his temper with. He lost his temper.

“Don’t be ridiculous. The grass on that spur is hip-deep. It hasn’t seen a train in years. If you want some sort of, I don’t know, berthing fee or something, say so, but kindly stop being so damnably obtuse.”

“Berthing fees? Are you trying to bribe me?” cried the stationmaster in a manner just a little too melodramatic to be insincere. “I’ve worked for the company man and boy for nigh on thirty years. If you think you can buy off that sort of loyalty for some dirty little bribe, you’ve got another thing coming!” He stormed into his office. Cabal followed him.

“How about a dirty big bribe, then?” he asked experimentally.

“I, sir, am a loyal employee of the company. Take your offensive offers of baksheesh and get out of here! And take that bloody train with you!”

Cabal could tell that subtle diplomacy wasn’t working. The two men glared at each other for a moment, until the stationmaster decided he could do his in comfort and sank into his big leather swivel chair. As he did so, his eyes flickered to a drawer he’d left open in his desk. Cabal saw his expression become momentarily stricken as he quickly slammed the drawer shut. Not quite quickly enough to stop Cabal getting an idea what was in there, though. He drew his smoked-glass spectacles down far enough to let the stationmaster know that he was looking narrowly at him, slid them back into place, turned, and left.