Jonathan Howard - Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“Okay,” said the fat, ugly man, faintly echoed by the plain ugly man. “S’pose I’ll ’ave a go.”

Coins and Ping-Pong balls exchanged hands. The fat, ugly man lobbed a ball in the general direction of the goldfish bowls without taking any time to aim at all. The ball hit one bowl’s rim, bounced high, and landed neatly in another.

“Well done, sir!” said Bobbins, brightly. “You win!”

The fat, ugly man and his companion looked unaccountably put out. “Bugger me, Anders,” he said to the ugly man. “I’ve only gorn an’ won, ’aven’t I?”

Anders looked miserable. “Bugger me, Croal. So you ’ave. Now what?”

“You win a goldfish!” butted in Bobbins, brightly.

Croal ignored him. “Just carry on as usual, s’pose. Okay?” he said to Anders.

“Okay,” said Anders. Then, in a theatrical shout, “Blimey! What a con! This ’ere stall’s a diddle!”

“Yeah!” joined Croal. “It’s a diddle! Cheat! Cheat!”

“But… you won?” said Bobbins, slightly less brightly.

As if by magic, a group of perhaps eight large men with pickaxe handles appeared out of the gathering crowd. “It’s a set-up!” they chorused. “It’s a con job! Smash it up!”

“Oh dear,” said Bobbins, his brightness almost undetectable as the men started to destroy his stall.

Cabal was at the steam calliope, loading up an unlabelled piece of music, when news of the disturbance reached him. En route, he stopped by the Tunnel of Love. There he found Horst flattering an attractive young woman to the sticking point.

“Horst! There’s trouble. I’d appreciate your presence.”

Horst looked like he might argue, but a goldfish bowl arching over the top of the tunnel and landing with a hollow plop in the water distracted him.

“Yes, it might be as well,” he admitted. Then, to the young lady, “I’m sorry, my dear, but I am required elsewhere. Stay right here. I’ll be back soon.” As he stepped away, Cabal noticed that her line of sight continued through the space where Horst had been standing a moment ago.

“You can’t go leaving mesmerised women littering up the place,” he snapped. “It’s, I don’t know, unhygienic.”

“It’s a funfair. People are used to seeing odd things,” replied Horst. “Besides, I’m famished. It’s been days. She’s the most edible thing I’ve seen tonight, and I’m not having her running away. Now, come on.” He disappeared into the darkness between the rides.

Cabal looked around, saw Mr. Bones, and clicked his fingers to gain his attention. “Bones! Do something about that woman!”

Bones looked enquiringly at the still form. “Like what, boss?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Put a blanket over her or something,” he snapped, and followed his brother at a trot.

By the time they got there, it had turned into a free-for-all. The destruction of the stall had sparked fights that had spread to other stalls. Horst picked up a man who was trying to set fire to a coconut shy by the scruff of the neck, told him he was bad, and threw him into the next field, which happened to be on the other side of the river. The man’s despairing scream diminishing into the night sky did a lot to calm matters. Cabal went around and did some further calming with his stick. After a few minutes of applied physical diplomacy, the fight had turned into a lot of people, mainly men, standing around battered, bruised, and sullen. Cabal looked at them with palpable loathing.

“Who started this?” he said, and everybody there past school age had sudden, unpleasant flashbacks to when they weren’t. No answers came. He paced up and down in front of them, his hands clasped behind his back. “All I want is the truth. Nobody will be punished,” he said, fooling nobody.

“They’ve gone,” said a faint voice from the wreckage of a stall. Faint, pained, but still eager to please. In a word, bright.

“Help him out of there, someone,” said Cabal, and immediately several men with scuffed knuckles and nosebleeds went to it, eager to show that they were good people who wouldn’t get involved in a common brawl — oh, no.

Bobbins was brought before Cabal like a spoil of victory and dumped at his feet. “What do you mean, they’ve gone?”

Bobbins painfully picked himself up and looked around. “There were two blokes. One was sort of ugly, and the other was sort of fat and ugly. They had a go on the bowls and won. That’s when they went bananas and started saying that they’d been cheated.”

“But they’d won?”

“Yes. I was trying to give them their prize when all these other blokes just popped up and smashed everything. I tried to stop them,” he implored brightly. “There were just too many.”

Horst was kicking around the wreckage. He knelt and picked out a dangerous-looking piece of wood. He showed it to Cabal. “It’s a pickaxe handle. Not the sort of thing people tend to carry around for self-defence.”

Cabal took it from him and hefted it. “You’re saying this was premeditated? Why? And by whom?”

“One of them was called Croal!” interrupted Bobbins, his brightness rekindling by the second. “That’s what the other one called him. He was called Andy. Or Anders. Or something.”

“But who are they? And why did they do it? And what are you grinning about?”

Horst was looking unpalatably smug. “You don’t know much about carny and travelling-fair folk, do you?”

“You know I …” Cabal noticed that the chastised brawlers were still standing around, showing a polite interest in the conversation. “Go on! Clear off! The show’s over!” Slowly they dispersed. Cabal turned back to Horst. “You know I don’t. So go on, have your moment of glory, and astound me with esoterica.”

“There’s nothing mysterious about it. What’s the primary function of a carnival? Not this carnival, obviously. I mean normal ones.”

“To let people have … fun,” replied Cabal as if he’d soiled his mouth with the word.

“Oddly enough, no. That’s how it fulfils its primary function. Try again.”

Cabal hated being patronised and was starting to seethe. “To make money. I’m not a fool. But we’re not interested in the money. I fail to see …” The truth of the matter slapped him in the face like a dead cod. “I am a fool. It’s so obvious.”

“Business competitors. They don’t know we’re not in it for the money. That’s between you, me, and the big ‘S.’” With some satisfaction, he watched Cabal shake his head in disgusted disbelief.

“I suppose this means we’ll have to kill them,” said Cabal finally.

“Think of the fuss. No, they’re businessmen. We’ll do a deal. Believe me, they’ll listen to reason.”

It didn’t take very much detective work to discover that there was a travelling fair in the next town: Butler’s Travelling Amusements. Cabal gave them a visit the next mid-morning to sort things out, taking along a thick wad of currency for if they wanted to be reasonable, and Joey Granite — “His Head’s Made of Stone!” — if they didn’t.

The fair site was quiet when they arrived. Over the entrance, a large, badly painted sign shouted, Billy Butler’s Travelling Amusements! The Best Rides! The Best Sideshows!

“It looks quite, quite appalling,” said Joey.

“Quite so,” replied Cabal. “Incidentally, Mr. Granite, I’d appreciate it if you could let me do the talking.”

“By all means, kemosabe.”

“I mean all the talking.”

“Certainly. You are, after all, the boss. Might one, however, enquire why?”

“To be quite frank, I’ve brought you along as muscle. People have some sort of psychological problem with believing a man can be quite mind-bogglingly strong and intelligent. It has to be one thing or the other.”