Jonathan Howard - Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

Billy Butler realised he had a visitor by the knock at his door. Actually, it was more the way the door was knocked down, torn out, and lobbed into the next county that was the clue.

“You again,” he said, lip curled, as Cabal walked in. Outside, there was a swatting sound as Joey dissuaded any of Butler’s riggers from coming to his assistance.

“I thought,” said Cabal, slowly and carefully, “that we had a deal, Butler.”

“I don’t rememer makin’ no — ”

“I thought,” continued Cabal, “that we had an understanding. You stay away from my carnival and I let you live.”

“I’ve been in this business man an’ boy for comin’ on — ”

“Yes, that’s the point, Mr. Butler. Mr. ‘I’ve been in this business man and boy since the dawn of time’ Butler. Past tense. You see? It is all over now, and all because you couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

Butler tried another tack. “This ’ere’s private property. If yew don’t — ”

“Ach! I don’t believe it! I’m talking about your imminent death and you’re talking about civil action for trespass.”

Butler paused. Something seemed to be getting through. “Wot? You’re goin’ ta kill me?”

“Yes. Probably.” Never discuss murder plans with the victim, he reminded himself. It takes all the spontaneity out of it.

“Why?”

“Why? You tried to burn down my carnival!”

Butler crossed his arms and smiled smugly. “Prove it.”

“Butler, try to under — You don’t mind if I sit down, do you? Try to understand, I’m not the police. I don’t need evidence, real or fabricated. All I need is reasonable suspicion, and you, Butler, are very suspicious. If, at this very moment, they were testing a suspiciometer in the Antipodes, they would be saying, ‘Good heavens, what is this very suspicious object that we have detected? Why, it looks just like Billy Butler, the world-renowned arsonist and bad liar.’”

Butler considered Cabal’s words and found them reasonable. “Orl right,” he said. “What’s this deal, then?”

“History. You had your chance and you let it go by.” He gazed out of the flyspecked caravan window. “Look, I don’t really want to have your blood on my hands. It would be terribly inconvenient. Why don’t we try one more time, eh?”

Twenty-four hours later, Cabal and Joey Granite were back. Thin wisps of smoke could still be seen to rise from Cabal’s cuffs and collar, and there was soot on his face. He seemed unhappy about something.

The previous day’s fire had been galling quite apart from the physical damage it had caused. When Cabal had woken from a troubled sleep to find that person or persons unknown had not only poured petrol along the length of the track beneath the train, including the office in which he slept, but also padlocked his door shut, it seemed to be verging upon an insult. He had just been considering which window to break when there had been a splintering, wrenching sound and Horst had opened the door.

“Did you know that somebody’d locked this door?” he had asked with an air of concerned enquiry.

Cabal pushed past him and jumped down onto the gravel by the track. “You two!” he shouted at the cab. “Move the train! Quickly, damn you!”

Dennis and Denzil had looked at each other. They’d half suspected something was amiss when the train had been engulfed with flames but hadn’t wanted to cause a fuss by drawing attention to it. Denzil had been about to tell Dennis to get a head of steam up when he’d noticed Dennis’s hair was on fire. That had been good for a laugh, or at least the grisly hooting noises that Denzil used instead these days, ever since his lungs had dried out. Dennis had frowned, scratched his head, and set fire to his hand. Denzil had hooted some more.

They’d still have been there if the great engine hadn’t decided that enough was enough, and started to move with a monstrous roar of outraged engineering. Cabal and Horst had watched in surprise as the locomotive backed slowly down the track. Where it passed, the fire was sucked back in under the locomotive’s belly and vanished in the glimmer of upward motion. Within a minute, there had been no flames left at all except inside the engine’s firebox, a firebox that had been damped down and cold but ten minutes before. Now it raged like a furnace. The brothers Cabal had looked at each other: there were still a good few things they didn’t know or understand about this carnival of theirs.

That was then Now Johannes Cabal and Joey Granite stood before Billy Butler and said nothing. The smell of smoke said it all for them.

Butler smiled nastily. “Oh. It’s — ” As famous last words go, they lacked a certain something.

“Uppercut, Joey,” said Cabal. Joey Granite delivered an uppercut of surpassing science and pugilistic artistry. It was a thing of beauty and kinetic poetry that might be long admired among people who enjoy watching other people beat the living daylights out of one another. It was also powerful enough to lift a small building off its foundations. Anything up to a branch library would have tottered and fallen. Billy Butler, despite a bit of a gut, simply wasn’t in the same league weight-wise. By some miracle, his head stayed on his body, but there was little doubt that the police would be making enquiries long before he hit the ground again. “Let us leave, Joey,” said Cabal as Butler vanished through the cloud base.

They walked quickly back through the Butler fairground, Butler’s men shouting abuse but staying comfortably out of danger, the women running around in predictable hysteria. They pointedly ignored the catcalls and screaming and were soon back on the road to Murslaugh.

Half a mile on, Cabal stopped.

Something was bothering him. It was the idea of predictable hysteria. Hysteria verging on the rehearsed.

Thinking back, he could have sworn several of the women were screaming “Rhubarb! Rhubarb!” And the abuse the men had shouted — there’d been a lot of fist shaking going on, but what had they actually said? Something like “Raffeln-huffeln-ranty-raa!” was it? “Grrulveln gnash raffer”?

“You’re cogitating, old bean,” said Joey, mildly curious. “What’s amiss?”

“I’m going back,” said Cabal determinedly.

“Oh? Why?”

“There’s something wrong here. Something fishy about that fair.”

“You mean apart from their proprietor being in low Earth orbit?”

“Yes, apart from that. I have a sixth sense that tells me when I’m being made a fool of.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of that. ‘Clinical paranoia,’ I think it’s called.”

“I have a sixth sense,” said Cabal as he gave Joey the look of a man who knows where to lay hands on a pneumatic drill and isn’t afraid to use it, “and it’s telling me somebody somewhere is trying to play me for a fool.” He turned on his heel and marched back towards the Butler fairground.

It wasn’t there. There was barely a sign it ever had been. “I knew it!” Cabal strode across the abandoned site. “I knew it!”

“Well, fancy,” said Joey, his great hands on his hips as he looked around with open-faced astonishment. “That’s quite a trick.”

Cabal stopped and looked at Joey. The ogreish man was very convincing in his surprise, but when all was said and all was done, he was still a product of Hell, created from the very blood of Satan. How far could he be trusted? Even Bones, his major-domo, sprang from the same wellhead. Perhaps Horst was the only one he could really trust. Blood was thicker than water, after all. He had its relative density written down somewhere to prove it.