Jonathan Howard - Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

Altruistic? How can evil ever be altruistic?

“It’s against its nature,” Barrow said, thinking out loud.

“Evil?” Leonie was still stuck on the word. It wasn’t one her father used often. In fact, she couldn’t remember him ever using it at all. “Are you serious?”

“I’m serious when I say I don’t want you to go to the carnival.” He tightened his grasp of her hands. “I’m scared for you. I’m scared for every person who walks through those gates.”

“You are serious.” She nodded slightly, and her trust in him closed the distance. “I won’t go.”

After she had gone, Barrow reached into his pocket and studied the two tickets. “You,” he said to one of them, “are surplus to requirements.” He threw the piece of pasteboard onto the fire. “You,” he said to the survivor, “are going to get me inside that carnival tonight. Then we shall see.” He went to the window to reread the printing on the ticket.

As he turned his back on the fire, he failed to see the ticket that he had thrown there flutter up the flue. It seemed miraculously unburnt. Indeed, as it made its way up the chimney, even the scorch marks faded away. Three-quarters of the way to the chimney stack, it made a difficult turn and headed for one of the upstairs fireplaces. Leonie sat by the window, looking off across the fields in the direction that she knew the carnival to be. Unseen, the ticket fluttered across the room and landed on her desk. It found itself a good, obvious position and practised looking alluring.

Cabal passed the rest of the day trying to keep his mind off a variety of things. Failure. Damnation.

Leonie Barrow.

First, he worked on his conjuring. The card vanish he’d used to dispose of the extra ticket he’d offered Frank Barrow had been technically correct but an artistic disaster. It would never do. He sat down with a deck of cards in front of a mirror and started vanishing them methodically and steadily until his pockets and sleeves bulged. Then he shook them out and started again. And again. And again. Then, for variety’s sake, he started vanishing and immediately reproducing them. The Queen of Spades flickered in and out of existence in his hand. He watched his hands closely in the reflection. He’d made a point of angling the mirror so that he could see only his hands in it. He had no desire to see his face.

When the cards started getting dog-eared and suggestively curved, like Tuscan roof tiles, he turned his attention to other objects on his desk. Pens, pencils, and a ruler mysteriously vanished and then made triumphant returns. He’d been pleased with how well he’d managed to make that woman’s confession vanish in the police station.

Thinking of it, he pulled both it and her contract from his pocket and took a moment to examine them. Nea, she was called. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever come across a Nea before. It was a pleasant name, and he let it run with abandon around his mind for a moment. Then he drew the little key from his waistcoat pocket, unlocked the desk drawer, and placed her contract beneath the others in the box. At the top, this left a single blank form. By hook or by crook, it had better be signed before midnight. He put the box away and carefully locked the drawer before returning his attention to the confession. He skimmed it and was quietly impressed at how accurate it was, given her disturbed state of mind at the time. He practised making it vanish a few more times before tearing it into ribbons and feeding them to the stove in the corner.

He leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the desk edge. Still a couple of hours before sundown. What to do? Horst had promised to finish his plans for making the carnival more acceptable to the staid people of this town, but, when he looked at them, they didn’t seem to have been touched. Cabal thought of the talk he’d had with Horst last night and felt unaccountably worried. There had been something important that obviously mattered to Horst, but Johannes had been distracted and missed it. He hoped it wasn’t too important.

He looked around the office, seeking distraction. His eye fell upon his large notebook, and he took it up. There was a piece of music that the calliope played, an odd, lurching tune that still sounded faintly familiar. Perhaps if he wrote it out he might remember where he’d heard it before. Not a man usually given to trivial pursuits, he nevertheless felt no qualms as he took up his ruler and pencil, carefully drew out staves, and started writing in notes.

Time passed in quietude broken only by the frequent crunching of the pencil sharpener. Cabal hated working with blunt instruments. Outside, the riggers followed what there were of Horst’s plans in total silence; they didn’t even need to breathe except for effect. The “House of Medical Monstrosity” had become the “Home for the Genetically Challenged,” and the tone had changed from “be horrified” to “be educated.” “The Hall of Pain: Torture Down the Centuries!” had transformed into “Man’s Inhumanity: An Exhibit of Conscience,” and “Monsters! Monsters! Monsters!” into “Unknown Nature: Cryptozoological Wonders.” Cabal himself had started to find his interest piqued by sideshows that he’d spent the last year walking past.

Cabal finished writing and looked at his work. It didn’t look familiar. Even tilting his head gently from side to side didn’t help. Then, acting on a sudden suspicion, he drew some more staves and wrote the music out again but this time in reverse. It still didn’t look familiar, but when he looked at it, it seemed far too cheerful to be a piece he’d naturally associate with this place. He whistled it experimentally. Now he was certain he’d heard it before. Outside, the sun hung just over the horizon.

Barrow sat in his garden and watched the day come to a close and wondered idly if he would ever see another. He was going to have to go to the carnival tonight and try to discover what it was that disturbed him so much about it, so wrong and corrupt. He didn’t want to. Not at all, not for a second. He just felt he ought. Furthermore, he felt that he really ought to do something about it. He wished there was somebody he could go to for help. However, he had the oddest feeling that if he suggested to anybody that the Cabal brothers — Johannes in particular — were not just proprietors of a carnival but were, in actual fact, founts of evil that must be confronted by glowing crusaders for good such as, for example, himself, then there was a fair chance he’d be relieved of his braces and laces before being brazenly patronised by a psychiatrist long before the night was out.

He thought about what he’d said to Leonie. He was scared for her, more so than ever before in his life. He was scared for himself, too. It’s only fear, he thought, and that can’t hurt me. Some bugger with a hatchet, now, that’s worth worrying about. He tried to imagine Cabal bearing down on him with an axe, a knife, a crowbar, and he smiled. The ice-cool Mr. Cabal behaving like a thug — now, that was funny. Then he remembered the dead look in Cabal’s eyes when he’d seen Leonie, and suddenly it wasn’t funny at all. Across the fields, the sound of the carnival’s calliope floated to him, the notes ugly and mocking. Barrow realised that the music had started the instant that the sun had gone down. That didn’t surprise him at all.

Cabal ignored the calliope and continued to whistle the reversed music. Damnation, what was it?

“I’m glad you think so,” said Horst from behind him.