Jonathan Howard - Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

Although I did say earlier that I didn’t want to descend into apportioning blame for the recent mass breakout, I feel I cannot let the behaviour of one of our clients go unmentioned. Rufus Maleficarus has sorely disappointed me personally. I thought he was making quite a good recovery from what the previous director had unhelpfully referred to as “a soul-searing, sanity-dissolving, profoundly malevolent appetite for power and revenge.” As it happens, I think the finger-painting lessons were going very well, at least up until Rufus used the paint to create a summoning circle, and then rode out of here on the back of an obliging Hound of Tindalos, taking the rest of his section with him. I’m sure he had his reasons. I just wish he’d talked through them in one of our sessions.

Be supportive of one another in this difficult time. Anybody talking to the press will be fired immediately.

Horst castled and looked out of the window. “How much longer is that signal going to keep us here?”

Johannes Cabal ran a fingertip along his eyebrow while he ruminated, shifted a bishop, and said, “Your game is coming to pieces. Checkmate in three.” He stood, stretched, and looked out along the track. “Over half an hour thus far. It’s an outrage. I’m going to find out what’s going on.” He took his long coat down from the hook. “Care for a walk?”

Horst checked his watch. “A little over half an hour until dawn; that should be more than enough time. Very well.”

Swathed in coats and mufflers, they climbed down onto the track and made their way towards Murslaugh Station, only two hundred yards away but unattainable by train until the signal changed. “A points failure?” hazarded Horst.

“Hardly. There’s been furious activity on the line ever since we got here. Something’s afoot, and the churlish scum have failed to tell us what.”

“You’re in a good mood.”

“No.”

They arrived at the end of platform two and climbed up. The scene was indeed one of furious activity. A locomotive that seemed to have been pulled out of a museum was making a head of steam while civilians, frantic with anxiety, fought for places in the antiquated carriages. The concept of “women and children first” seemed to have escaped a few people there.

“It’s an evacuation,” said Horst, aghast. “What’s caused it? What’s going on? Hi! You there!” He strode forward to argue with a man who’d just pulled two children out of a carriage to give himself space.

Cabal hadn’t time for social justice. All he could see were potential souls skipping town. Looking around, he saw a harassed railway official surrounded by a huddle of desperate people. It seemed as good a place to start as anywhere. He made his way through the group, cracking skulls with his death’s-head cane and hacking shins with his feet. After the first few cries of pain, a path magically opened. Cabal touched the brim of his hat and said, “I am Johannes Cabal, theatrical entrepreneur. What is happening here?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t got time to tell you, sir. The town’s in a state of emergency. You’ll need to get out as quickly as possible.”

Behind him, Cabal was passingly aware of a serious argument breaking out. He recognised one voice as his brother’s. To the official he said, “I don’t think so. We’ve only just arrived. I am joint proprietor of the Cabal Brothers Carnival. I am Johannes Cabal.”

“Yes, sir, you already said,” replied the railway official testily.

Behind Cabal, the argument stopped abruptly with a solid thud . The man who had pulled the children off the train flew past at head height. After a moment, Horst joined Cabal. “I shouldn’t have done that, but he was just so infuriating. I hope I haven’t hurt him.”

“You’ll have to ask him when he lands. This,” said Cabal to the official, “is my brother, Horst.” The official’s testiness evaporated. A strong sense of self-preservation can do that.

“And how can I help you, gentlemen?”

“What’s going on?”

“The most dreadful calamity, sirs. We just heard but two hours ago, and the town’s been in an uproar ever since. I haven’t ever seen anything like it.”

“That’s as may be, but we’ve been stuck just spitting distance from the station for the last half-hour or so. Didn’t it cross anybody’s mind to at least inform us as to what’s amiss?”

“What is amiss, anyway?” added Horst. “Nobody’s being very clear on that.”

“What?” said a small, greasy man, rubbing a death’s-head-shaped bump on his forehead. “You came here by train?”

“No,” said Cabal. “We’ve got an entire carnival in our pockets.”

But a muttering had started. “They’ve got a train… They’ve got a train.” The appearance of a new escape route from Murslaugh was causing a sensation.

“It’s not a passenger train, so don’t get your hopes up,” said Cabal wearily, but it was too late. A small group of men, to whom the phrases “Act in haste, repent at leisure” and “Why a mouse when it spins?” [3] The classical example of a sentence that is grammatically correct yet semantically meaningless. I’m sure you knew that. were equally cloaked in incomprehensible mystery, had rapidly coagulated into a mob and were already climbing off the end of the platform before rushing off into the darkness with the intention of taking control of the train.

“Oh, sir!” cried the railway official. “You have to stop them! They’re likely to do anything!”

“You’re familiar with the theory of evolution?” asked Cabal.

“Sir?”

“They’re about to find out why intelligence is a survival trait. Now, what’s all the panic about?”

“There’s an army heading this way, sir! An army!”

Horst and Cabal exchanged glances. “We weren’t aware that anybody had declared a war,” said Horst.

“Oh, no, it isn’t that kind of army, sirs. It’s an army of lunatics!” In the distance, the bullish “Huzzah!”-ing of the men who’d gone to take the carnival train stopped abruptly.

“An army of lunatics. Fancy. There’s a football match on, then?”

“No, sir! It’s … the Maleficarian Army!”

If the official had been expecting a spectacular reaction, he was to be disappointed. Cabal rolled his eyes and Horst said, “Who?”

“Rufus Maleficarus,” said Cabal. “Who let him out?”

“I think he broke out, sir. With most of the inmates.”

In the darkness beyond the end of platform two, the screaming began. The official started, white-faced. “Nothing to worry about,” said Horst reassuringly. “Just those men meeting our security personnel. Johannes, who is this Rufus … thingy?”

“Maleficarus. Self-styled warlock and Great Beast. Actually, rather a — what’s the term? — wanker. Stole some esoteric tome from one of the great universities, after a lot of work managed to read it, after a lot more work managed to comprehend it. Which is, of course, the last thing you want to do. All that knowledge needed lots of space inside his head, so it heaved his sanity out of his ears. Casting himself as some sort of manifestation of pure evil on Earth, he made unwholesome sacrifices to his dark gods and demanded great power in return.”

Horst touched his forehead and feigned dizziness. “Ooh, déjà vu.” Cabal ignored him.

“His dark gods obviously have their standards; they gave him a few party tricks and cut him loose.”

“Dark gods?” said the official, dismayed by such wickedness.

“Extra-cosmic entities with names that sound like they were typed up by a drunken Egyptologist. Anyway, being able to pull a squid out of a top hat didn’t keep him ahead of the authorities. The last I heard, they’d banged him up in a spherical cell at Brichester Asylum. So he’s loose again? How nice.” The thinness of his lips implied that it was anything but.