Jonathan Howard - Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

She looked at the folded paper as if its blank exterior would tell her all that she needed to know. Cabal laid it out flat, turned it so that it faced her, and slid it across to her. She looked at it, obviously not reading. Cabal had an uncomfortable feeling that she was going to start crying again. He drew his pen and offered it to her.

“Sign. Now.”

She took the pen and, her hand trembling slightly, she signed.

Cabal walked out into the new day. The last day of the carnival. He needed one last soul and had every chance of succeeding. Why, then, he wondered, did he feel so wretched?

Cabal patted the pocket containing the contract to reassure himself that it hadn’t vanished due to some capricious event at the quantum level. No, it hadn’t. He drew a deep breath; some part of him had been rather hoping it might. He was tired, more tired than he could ever remember being, and for a man who regarded sleep as a necessary evil, this was very tired indeed. Despite it, he had no desire to rest his head. No doubt he was well past the point where sleep came easily. Besides, he might dream.

He adjusted his dark-blue spectacles and looked around. It was the first time he’d actually entered Penlow on Thurse, and what he saw depressed him. It looked absolutely idyllic, exactly the sort of place that folk dream of retiring to before they examine their pension fund and end up in a terrace next door to a psychotic with a dog, a baseball bat, and a sousaphone. It raised the question “Where do the citizens of Penlow go to retire?” Cabal didn’t care. The place bothered him inexplicably.

A postman shot by on his bicycle, smiling and saying hello as he swept down the road to a junction. Despite there not being another vehicle on the road for as far as the eye could see, the postman slowed, checked both ways, and signalled before joining the main road. A place where bicyclists — postmen to boot — obeyed the laws of the road. Cabal had seen many strange things in his life, of which the walking dead were the least. He’d run for his life from the guardians of Solomon’s Key, avoided the attentions of the gargoyle Bok, and studied, although been careful not to blow, a bronze whistle upon which the words “QUIS EST ISTE QUI VENIT” were deeply inscribed. None of these, however, had filled him with such a sense of hidden threat and foreboding as this polite and cheerful postman.

“All I need now is a friendly vicar and I’ll know I’m in trouble.” He turned and walked into a priest, a man of gentle and genial demeanour in his mid-sixties.

“I do beg your pardon, my son. I was just ruminating on my sermon and …” He paused and looked at Cabal over the top of his half-moon spectacles. “But you must be one of the people from the travelling carnival, I declare! How do you do! I’m delighted to make your acquaintance. I’m the vicar at Saint Olave’s, just over there.” He gestured towards a small parish church of heartbreaking architectural excellence in picture-postcard grounds. “Will you still be here on Sunday? Perhaps you would like to attend the service. We’ve always got space for visitors.”

“No, I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

“You’re moving on, no doubt. In my youth, such a peripatetic life held great appeal. Now, however …” He spread his hands and smiled so sweetly Cabal was caught by opposing urges to strike him and adopt him.

“We won’t be here,” replied Cabal. “That’s true, but I wouldn’t attend anyway.” He smiled. “I’m a Satanist.”

The vicar smiled back. Cabal felt a need to check his own smile in a mirror to make sure it was still the thing of fear that he’d carefully cultivated for years.

“Ah, me,” said the vicar, infuriatingly unshocked. Cabal might as well have admitted to preferring spring to summer or a fondness for chocolate digestives. “And are you happy?”

Cabal’s large quiver of cutting replies proved unexpectedly empty. He had been ready for almost any response but sympathy. “No,” he managed to say finally. “No, I’m not. It’s not something I chose to be. It’s more like work experience. I intend to give it up as soon as possible.”

“I shan’t argue with your decision. Dear me, no. I cannot argue with your decision. It seems very wise to me. Well, I must be getting on. I’ll bid you a good day, sir.” Cabal found himself shaking the man’s hand, thanking him for his concern, and wishing him a pleasant morning.

Cabal watched the vicar wander off in the direction of his perfect church and bet himself that the sermon would be perspicacious, amusing, and interesting. People would enjoy going to church. He found himself envying them. He stopped and inspected the sensation. What was wrong with him? He sat down on a well-sited and unvandalised bench and set about sorting himself out. He was almost glad when the little girl sat down at the far end of the bench. He loathed children and was glad that here, at least, was a situation he could trust his reactions in.

“Hello,” said the little girl, and smiled a gap-toothed smile brightly at him. Cabal suddenly felt broody. An insane urge to find a good woman, settle down, and have a couple of kids — one of each — lit upon him like a thing out of a nightmare.

Staggering to his feet, he managed a disjointed warning against talking to strangers before walking quickly away. He needed somewhere quiet to pull himself together. A short expedition into the churchyard resulted in a hasty retreat, as his feet started to smoke. He’d forgotten about the danger of consecrated ground in his soulless state. That was another inconvenience he’d be rid of once he found somebody. Just one more person. It worried him that he’d forgotten about the danger: combusting footwear was an experience that tended to stay with a person. Yet that was exactly what he’d done — blithely forgotten all about it, seduced by the tranquillity of the place. His sense of foreboding was deepening by the minute.

“Hello, Mr. Cabal,” said Barrow, happening upon him at the end of a short parade of shops. “You don’t look well, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“Yes. Yes, I do,” said Cabal, drawing on some inner reservoir of animosity. “I’m always pale. I’m” — inspiration danced lithely out of grasp — “a pale person.”

“I had noticed,” replied Barrow without reproach. “I didn’t mean your colour, though. I was talking about your air. You seem lost.”

Cabal looked sharply at him. “And what if I am? What is it to you?”

Barrow smiled. Cabal was getting sick of people smiling at him. He was getting even sicker of the impulse to respond in kind. “It’s my town,” said Barrow. “We feel responsible for strangers here.”

“Do you? Do you indeed?” Cabal thought he was beginning to sound like an old man. Vaguely peevish but without real rancour. His fire seemed to be going out. A desire to escape back to the carnival, where he could be foul-tempered at a moment’s notice, was certainly within him, but it was being balanced, no, overbalanced, by an inertia to stay in Penlow.

“I’ve got some good news,” continued Barrow. “I was going to go over to the carnival because I thought you might like to hear it, but here you are, so you’ve saved me a trip.”

“I had business to attend to,” said Cabal, while he thought, Why am I explaining myself?

“Offering the girl help with legal expenses. Yes, I know. That was very kind of you.” Cabal blanched. Barrow continued, “I’ve just come away from the police station. I went there after I heard the news from Dr. Greenacre.”