Jonathan Howard - Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“What are you going to do, Johannes?”

“I’m going to deal with it. I’ve encountered Mr. Maleficarus once before. Not what you’d call a meeting of minds. I’ll have a word with him, tell him to take his army of the touched elsewhere.”

“He’ll listen to you, then?”

“I doubt it, but I ought to give him the option before killing him. In the meantime, we need to do something to stop our potential customers leaving town.”

“That’s my department,” said Horst, and, almost too quickly for the eye to see, he ascended a stack of trunks.

“Ladies and gentlemen, might I have your attention?” he said in a loud, clear voice. There wasn’t a shred of interest from the churning crowd. It seemed that the ladies and gentlemen had grown resistant to calls for calm. People continued to fight for room on the train.

The incredibly loud report of a gun followed by the tinkle of glass from the platform roof focussed their attention wonderfully. Even the train seemed to be stunned. Cabal blew the smoke from the barrel of his Webley revolver and replaced it in his gladstone bag.

“My brother has something to say,” he said simply in the profound silence.

“Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I am Horst Cabal of the Cabal Brothers Carnival. The man with the gun and the will to use it is my brother, Johannes. It is our intention to deliver you from the approaching menace of the Maleficarian Army and provide you with the best in travelling entertainment. All that we ask is your patience while the former is dealt with and your attendance when the latter is prepared. Thank you again, and bless you all.” He jumped down.

“Bless you all?” hissed Cabal.

“They’re going to need it,” replied Horst.

The sun was half an hour up by the time Cabal encountered Rufus Maleficarus and his army of the mad. Directed by many grateful citizens, he had made his way through the town lauded on all sides as some sort of hero, which was something of a turnabout, given the way he was usually treated by mobs. Flowers and kisses were a novel change from burning torches and lynch ropes. Not that he liked them much, either.

Then up he walked, out of the town, and onto the broad moor that lowered there like a huge expanse of earth, covered with grass, sheep, and drystone walling. Rufus and his cohort were just marching towards the town when Cabal arrived and stopped and watched and waited. As they got closer, he realised that they were singing. From the tune, their choice of song seemed inappropriate until they got close enough for him to make out the lyric.

The Maleficarian Army sang with the vigour of scouts fresh out of camp. They could probably keep this drivel up for hours on end. “All together now!” boomed the leader. Even at this range, Cabal could recognise Rufus by his hideously deformed dress sense.

“And the Tcho-Tcho sing …?” demanded Rufus in the tone whose subtext ran, “Anybody not having fun will be smashed in the face with a skillet.”

Cabal dimly recalled that the musical genius who’d decided to put on Necronomicon: The Musical had got everything he deserved: money, fame, and torn to pieces by an invisible monster.

Rufus had finally spotted him and, throwing up his hand in a gesture suitable for halting a column of war-elephants, advanced alone. He stopped some ten yards from Cabal and eyed him contemptuously. Cabal put down his bag and held his cane in the crook of his arm while he wiped his nose. Behind Rufus, the insane, the deranged, and the eccentric but poor formed up into a herd thirty or forty strong. Rufus was a big man with a fine beard and a romantic mane of hair that got him halfway to being a poet without so much as having to dip a nib. Both beard and mane were, inevitably, red. He wore an Inverness cape, plus fours, and stout shoes. Inexplicably, he also wore a tea cosy on his head, into which the symbol of an eye in a pyramid had been stitched. “Well, well, well,” he roared. This was his only volume. “If it isn’t Johannes Cabal” — the army jeered and hissed — “the necromancer.” The army went very quiet and tried to hide behind Rufus.

Cabal put away his handkerchief. “Hello, Rufus,” said Cabal flatly. “Turn around and go away. Thank you.” He picked up his bag and started to go.

“Go away?” roared Rufus (vide supra) . “GO AWAY? Do you know who I am?”

Cabal turned. Even behind his blue-tinted spectacles, you just knew that his eyes had narrowed. “I called you ‘Rufus,’ Rufus. Perhaps I made a hash of the pronunciation? Let’s see, that’s ‘Rufus,’ pronounced ‘egotistical, megalomaniac, half-arsed, half-witted, half-baked, swivel-eyed, bubble-brained, slack-jawed, slope-browed, prattling, porcine, dimwit Scheißkopf.’ There, was that better?”

“You shouldn’t have said that,” whispered Rufus in a knuckle-whitening fury. If one imagines a tyrannosaurus appearing in light opera and delivering a line sotto voce , that was the effect. “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

“I don’t like you anyway, so it makes few odds. I don’t like you happy, sad, beamish, or maudlin. The only way that I will like you is if you take yourself and your friends there away to where you came from.”

“I should have dealt with you years ago, Cabal, when we first met. You never understood the powers that I was acquiring, never understood the cosmic influences that ran through this mortal frame. I have magic that you cannot begin to comprehend.”

“You’re talking about the one where somebody signs a playing card, you burn it, and then it reappears whole, rolled up in the middle of an orange, yes? You’re right, that one’s always baffled me.”

Some of the Maleficarian Army sniggered. Rufus was too angry to notice. “You’ve had your warning, Cabal. Now, prepare to face the terrible arcane wrath of Maleficarus!” Somewhere, a sheep bleated and quite ruined the effect. Maleficarus tilted his head forward and glowered at Cabal through bushy eyebrows. Placing his index and middle fingers on each temple, he started to mutter diabolical incantations.

Cabal blew his nose again. “You haven’t got anything that works on colds, have you? I think I may be coming down with one.” Rufus doubled the intensity of his mumblings. Seconds passed. Cabal checked his watch. “Could you speed this up, please? I’m a busy man.” Rufus redoubled. Cabal waited. The only effect he could feel was that his damn nose was itching. Perhaps he intends me to sneeze myself to death, he wondered. He clapped his handkerchief to his face as another sneeze came, and so missed Rufus’s magical incantation working.

After a momentary sense of falling, Cabal hit the ground going backwards, trailing heels striking the grass first. Belatedly, he realised that something had bodily picked him up and thrown him. He lay on the wet grass for a moment, marshalling his thoughts. He felt all right, although he knew that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Still, he could feel his toes, the dampness soaking through his clothes, the fine rain falling on his upturned face. He was just starting to formulate some really unpleasant things that he was going to do to Rufus and his troop when he thought, But it wasn’t raining a moment ago.