Jonathan Howard - Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

Those are th’ two parties, but we also got all these kine people an’ stuff who can jus’ stroll round the place, nonchalant like.”

Cabal looked at them and sighed. Most of them couldn’t stroll if they had a handbook on the subject, never mind doing it nonchalantly. He also noticed that his gaze kept sliding over one part of the group. With a deliberate effort he concentrated on the spot and finally noticed a small man who was so nondescript that even “nondescript” was slightly too exciting an adjective to describe him. “Who are you?” he asked. Everybody around the man tapped their chests in surprise, and it took a few moments of “No, not you, beside you, on the other side, no, your other side,” before the man realised he was the subject of attention. Interestingly, several others continued to look through the man in puzzlement as if he weren’t there.

“Oh,” said the man in a soft, unaccented voice, “you mean me.”

“Yes,” said Cabal, working hard to keep his line of sight locked to the man. “Who are you? I don’t remember seeing you before.”

“My name is Alfred Simpkins, sir. You were kind enough to take me in when my colleagues and I absconded from Laidstone Prison.”

“You’re one of the murderers ?”

“Yes, sir.”

“One of the serial killers?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So …” Cabal looked at the pale little man with his hair combed across his bald patch, his little moustache, his little glasses, his cardigan and cheap suit with the patched elbows. “What’s your interest in this?”

“You’re looking for Detective Inspector Francis Barrow, retired, are you not? I saw him in the Hall of Murderers earlier this evening, snooping, skulking.” Some colour almost came into his cheeks. A couple of his neighbours finally spotted him and yelped with surprise.

Interesting, thought Cabal, he’s only easily visible when he shows emotion. Otherwise he’s too bland to notice. “He caught you, didn’t he?”

“Yes, sir. With your permission, I’d like to kill him.” He said it in the same way others might say, “I’d like an extra pint and a carton of yoghurt.”

“If you find him, you report it to one of the others. I want him alive.” Cabal’s thoughts were still on the last unsigned contract. “No personal vendettas — I’ve got a business to run.”

“Very good, sir,” said Alfred Simpkins in a tone devoid of anything.

Cabal cast his eye over the rest of the group before nodding with some little satisfaction. “Very good. You know who you’re looking for. Find him. Dismissed.” As they left, he sought out Bones. “Mr. Bones, have you seen my brother recently? In the last hour or so?”

“Afraid not, boss. I see him round, you want me to tell him you asked?”

“Yes, if you would. Thank you.”

Barrow hid behind the Waltzer and considered his next move. He’d already made one terrible tactical error by not getting the heck out of the carnival while he had a chance. He’d managed to convince himself that help could be found here, however, and that had been a big mistake. He hadn’t seen a single person whom he felt he could trust to behave sensibly, or who wouldn’t simply be put in too much risk. When he belatedly realised this, he’d headed for the exit, only to find an enormous character whose head seemed to be constructed from animated stone standing by the gate, watching those going home with a close attention. Barrow didn’t believe that he could hope to go up against the stone-headed man armed with anything less than an anti-tank rifle. A cursory examination of the fencing that surrounded the Cabal Bros. Carnival indicated that he wouldn’t be getting out that way, either: twelve feet high and topped with razor wire. He’d assumed that the inward bend at the top was a mistake, that they’d put up the fence the wrong way around. After all, putting it up that way would be far better at keeping people in than out. Now he wasn’t so sure it was a mistake at all. He was trapped, then. In that case, he had no choice but to stay hidden until daybreak. From what he’d seen on his previous early visit, most of the carnival’s denizens weren’t very keen on daylight. He’d watched a group of flickering dark things pass across the roofs and hoardings a few minutes earlier. Only the fact that he was out of the bright lights himself had made them visible; the townsfolk below had remained entirely unaware of the lightly tripping mob of nightmare that had passed only a few feet above their heads, shielded by the brilliant bulbs, neons, and fluorescents that made the darkness beyond so much deeper.

Barrow looked back on the unpleasant feeling of foreboding that had been with him much of the day, the feeling that he had glorified with the word “fear,” and smiled. No, that had just been the collywobbles. Now he was afraid. They were throwing everything into the search, and that meant things that had only ever been catalogued in chained books in cathedrals. Things that were a long way away from the human monsters he’d spent his working life hunting and bringing to justice. Thinking of that helped him; perhaps he could find some strength there by remembering the predators he’d pulled out of the crowd and thrown into gaol? He tried it.

Smith, the insurance man who collected on a few too many policies for comfort. Yes, he could still remember the look on Smith’s face when the verdict came in, like a spoilt child who’d been found out. Jones, the doctor who started to play God with his patients’ lives and disposed of the ones he disapproved of. That had been difficult — Jones had been “assisting” the enquiry as an expert witness, and it was the alteration of a piece of evidence that had made Barrow look more closely at his involvement. Ye gods, the trouble he’d had convincing his superiors to probe Jones’s background more thoroughly. Brown, the hatter with the very private collection of busts he used to model his wares. If there had ever been a man to revel in his own insanity, it had been Brown. He’d actually become a hatter purely because of the association with madness. When he’d been sentenced, he’d asked to see his captor in private. There, as the Black Maria waited to take him away, he’d leaned close to Barrow and, laughing quietly to himself, whispered, “I’m not really mad. Only pretending, only pretending!” He was led away making shushing noises at Barrow — it was to be their private little joke.

And Simpkins, the man who killed because he could. They’d arrested him on fifteen charges, and he’d quietly suggested in the interview room that there were thirty-two missing persons that they might like to add to the tally. Barrow could still remember Simpkins in the dock while the charges were read, never showing a flicker of emotion but seeming polite, if a little bored. “Do you plead guilty or not guilty?”

Simpkins had pushed his glasses back up his nose, smiled slightly to show that he just wanted to help, and said, “Oh, guilty. Obviously.”

In his interviews, he would only talk to Barrow, and ignored questions from anybody else even if Barrow was present. “Why is it so important that you speak only to me?” Barrow had asked finally. “It’s very inconvenient.”

“Because you can see me, Detective Inspector Barrow. Other people start to lose interest after a while. You, delightfully, always see me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ve gone through life as a piece of marginalia, faintly written in soft pencil. Passed by, overlooked, ignored. It has been of great personal distress to me, I cannot begin to tell you how painful. Since childhood, I was always the last to be chosen — if, indeed, they remembered to choose me at all. Always considered the wallflower, though I stood full-front and cried, ‘Me! Me! Me!’ Never loved, never despised, never anything to stir the emotions at all. Alfred Simpkins, the invisible man. After a while, it quite began to aggravate me. That’s when I started making people take some notice of me.”