Jonathan Howard - Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“Timothy,” said Timothy in a small voice, although not as small as one might expect under the circumstances.

“Master Timothy, are you enjoying the fair so far?”

“It’s a bit… funny.”

“Oh, yes,” said Jan, leaning forward in his seat to peer into the darkness, “it’s a funny fair all right.”

Suddenly thin figures, apparently made from outsize black pipe cleaners with broken spoons for heads, leapt out of nowhere and danced around, making gobbling noises. Timothy jumped a little. “Garn!” shouted Jan. “Get it out of it, you beatniks!” The figures capered out of sight, still gobbling. Jan turned to Timothy. “I mean, what are they meant to be? They’re just a mess. We’ve been on the go for months now, and we’ve never met anybody who had a morbid fear of surrealism. Dislike?” He seesawed a paw. “Maybe. Fear? Nah.”

They trundled on in silence for a few more moments. Something indescribably phobic shuffled out and sat by the track, smoking a woodbine. “I am the thing that lives under your bed. Goorah, goorah.” This last delivered as the sort of noise a monster might make if it could get up a bit of enthusiasm.

“No, you ar not,” sa I. “For I sleep on the upper bunk and so wot live under mi bed is mi brother Victor. And you ar not neerly horribel enuff.”

“Oh,” said the something. “Bollocks.” It shuffled back into the shadows until only the glowing tip of its cigarette was visible.

“You’re a tough nut to crack, Master Timothy,” said Jan. A wardrobe loomed up, and the door began to open, slowly, menacingly. Jan leaned out of the train and kicked it shut. “Don’t waste your time,” he called at the wardrobe as it was lost in the gloom behind them. Muffled swearing seemed to be coming from it. “He’s only a kid.” Jan turned to Timothy and studied him with an appraising eye. A tug of the thread allowed him to study Timothy with two appraising eyes. “We should have a few vampires and zombies and that sort of thing in, shouldn’t we? All this psychological stuff is entirely wasted on you.”

With another battering of bat-wing doors, they were back out into the open air. “Hey, kid,” said Jan as the train drew to a halt and the driver returned to studying the racing papers, “want to see some stuff?”

“Wot sort of stuff?” I sa.

“The stuff of NITEMARE!” he sa back.

“Okey-dokey,” I sa.

Timothy and Jan wandered the carnival, drawing surprisingly little comment except a few disparaging ones about the condition of that little man’s costume. “Where are we going?” asked Timothy.

“Dunno yet,” said Jan. He paused and looked slowly around, as if his ears were radar antennae. “Let’s try the Hall of Mirrors.”

“Ah, pooh!” said Timothy with gusto. “Halls of Mirrors are boring. All there is, is a lot of mirrors, an’ one makes you look fat an’ another makes you look thin an’ one makes you look wiggly. That’s boring.”

“You’re too young to be worldly-wise, Master Timothy,” said Jan. “C’mon, get educated.” They went around the back of the sideshow and slipped in through a service door.

“We won’t get in trouble, will we?” asked Timothy a little tremulously, for he was basically a responsible lad and respected the privacy of individuals and institutions. Besides which, he hated getting shouted at.

Jan paused to think about it, erecting his floppy ear and flopping his erected one while he did so. “Trouble? Nah, I shouldn’t think so. The Hall of Mirrors is much more fun from this side.”

They were in a darkened room, the only illumination coming from tall, thin oblongs of subdued light. The oblongs seemed at first to be pictures of a dull room, until Timothy belatedly realised that they were on the other side of the mirrors, looking into the hall itself. From this side, the images were completely undistorted, as if the mirrors were plain glass, and no sooner had he made that realisation than people started coming in. He watched as people trooped past, pausing, laughing, doing knee bends, sticking out tongues, dragging their friends in front of the panes, moving on, all in total silence. “What’s so good about this?” asked Timothy.

“Come over here,” said Jan, beckoning. Timothy joined him by a mirror that was in a little cul-de-sac off the main room. The light was bad, but there was a woman standing on the other side looking at herself in the looking glass. She wasn’t smiling. Timothy squinted; she looked familiar somehow, but this mirror, unlike all the others, didn’t give a clear image. It was like looking through a film of oil, or at a body at the bottom of a shallow pond. “Know what she’s seeing?” asked Jan in an unnecessary whisper. “She’s seeing herself as she wishes she was. Probably a bit younger, probably a bit more shapely, probably not looking quite so much like somebody travelling steerage in the ship of life. Sad, ain’t it?”

“Why’s she want to be younger? I can’t wait to grow up.”

“You don’t have to wish to grow up, it happens all the same. You can’t stop it. Not without the proper assistance, anyway.”

“She looks all right to me,” said Timothy, to whom all adults were much of a muchness.

“Yeah, but you ain’t seeing what she’s seeing. If you were looking in that mirror, know what you’d see? You’d see yourself in a few years’ time.”

“As a space pilot?”

“If that’s what you want to be. I don’t suppose she wants to be Daniella Dare, though. Whoa, she’s gonna be off in a minute if the boss doesn’t shake a leg.” The woman shook her head unhappily and turned to go. As if on cue, a tall blond man in slightly archaic clothes stepped up beside her. They started talking. The man gestured towards the mirror, and the woman, despite herself, couldn’t help but look. “That’s the boss,” said Jan, “Johannes Cabal himself.” Cabal stood beside the woman, talking quietly, as she looked at her reflection that wasn’t really her reflection.

“Jus’ a minute,” said Timothy, frowning profoundly. “He won’t be seeing what she’s seeing, will he? He’ll be seeing what he wants to be. What’s that, then?” Unless Cabal wanted to be a space pilot, too, Timothy couldn’t conceive of anything he’d rather be than the owner of a carnival. You could go on the rides as much as you liked and eat candy floss for dinner. If he’d looked a little closer, perhaps he might have seen that Cabal wasn’t looking in the mirror at all, only at the woman. In fact, he seemed to be making some effort to avoid the sight of his reflection.

“Dunno,” said Jan, shrugging. “Oh, here we go.”

Cabal was leading the woman away. She kept stealing glances over her shoulder. She looked hopeful. “Sign on the dotted line, get your heart’s desire and all at the footling cost of…”

Jan looked sideways at Timothy. “Are you sure you want to be a space pilot?”

“Oh, yes!”

“More than anything else?”

“Yes!”

Mi nu frend Yan the Rabit of TEROR took me owt of the HALL OF MIRORS and arownd the outside of the fare until we arrive at a big thing. At first I think it is only the gurly Helty-Skelty. But no! It is a MOONROCKET! On the front it have a big sine saing, “ROCKET TO THE MOON! VISIT MOONBASE OMEGA! FIGHT THE SELENITES! EXPEERINCE ZERO G!”

“I own miself impressed, my floppy bunny frend,” sa I.

Rocket Ship Erebus swept low over the Sea of Tranquillity. Transmissions from Moonbase Omega had ceased twelve standard space hours earlier, and Space Control had dispatched the nearest rocket ship to investigate. “It’s probably the Selenites,” gruff Colonel Crommarty had warned them. “They’ve been quiet just recently. Too quiet. Be careful, m’boy.”