Jonathan Howard - Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

“Like you were expecting it.”

“Damn right I was. Just like you were. You’re not stupid, Johannes. Inhuman and morally bankrupt perhaps, but not stupid. Chose their moment, didn’t they?”

“Oh, yes, they did that right enough.” Cabal brushed some of the debris from the desk corner and sat there. His favoured leather chair seemed to be home to a nest of mice. “Look, I’m not proud of what I’ve done, but it’s done. I’ve been manipulated from pillar to post, committed acts I’d prefer to forget about, but that’s all done with. I’m not pretending that the ends justify the means, but the fact remains, I’ve won the wager. I get my soul back, and I can get on with my research.”

“Whoopee,” said Horst.

Cabal stifled his annoyance. Horst had put up with a lot. “Now, I’m sorry about last night, the things I said. In my defence, I can honestly say I wasn’t quite myself. I’m not insensitive to all the work and effort you put into the carnival, and, well, it would have been a failure without you.”

“Rub my nose in it, why don’t you?”

“The point is,” said Cabal, talking through him, “the point is, you kept your side of our deal, so I’ll keep my side. I’ve had a few ideas about how your condition can be treated. If you’ll come back to the house with me, I promise you that I won’t rest until I’ve found a cure.” There was a long pause. “I’ve said my piece,” finished Cabal.

Horst looked at him for a long moment. “No. No, it won’t do. I’m afraid I’ll have to turn down your kind offer for several reasons. Firstly …” He started to walk to the window but kicked something. He picked up the crowbar, touched the tip, sniffed it. “That’s blood. Is this what you hit Frank Barrow with?”

“It is,” said Cabal, irritated by the distraction. “He used it to try to get into the locked drawer, to get the contracts. I was expecting something more artistic from him.” He stopped, thought. “Just a moment.” He walked to the desk and inspected the drawer. There was a scratch on the lockplate, which had previously confirmed to his satisfaction that Barrow had tried to force it. He cursed himself for addled thinking.

“Firstly,” carried on Horst, regardless, “I really have no interest in being stuck in the same house as you for the years your experiments would inevitably take. Secondly, we both know that your interest would slide back to your main researches and probably leave me high and dry. Thirdly, you’re a despicable human being who should have died at birth.”

“Sticks and stones,” said Cabal, otherwise paying no attention. “The crowbar was on the chair over there. How, then, did Barrow even manage to attempt to jemmy this drawer when the tool was nowhere near to hand?”

“Fourthly, I am never going to be able to live with myself for helping you, not if I live to be a thousand, which, given my condition, is a real possibility.”

Cabal was still ignoring him. “And, further, why attack the lock when surely a crowbar would be used against the catch?” He examined the scratch. “This is too fine to have been caused by that bar. This lock’s been picked.”

“Fifthly, lastly, and I think most tellingly, I’m not going to accept your offer because you’ve lost your bet.”

Cabal looked up at him with dawning horror as Horst reached into his waistcoat pocket and produced a couple of shining lockpicks. He held them up for inspection as, with the other hand, he took a familiar-looking piece of parchment from an inside pocket. He shook it open and turned its face towards Cabal.

It was one of the contracts. It was unsigned.

Cabal felt his legs starting to go and sat heavily on the floor. “Oh, Horst,” he said. “Oh, what have you done?”

“I’ve killed you, brother. Just like you killed me. I would like to think there’s some small degree of nobility in my actions, though.”

Cabal couldn’t tear his eyes from the paper. “When did you do it?”

“I picked your desk drawer and stole this about ten months ago.”

“Ten months? You’ve had that for ten months?”

“It took me until then to notice that you never counted the contracts, only ticked them off in that silly book of yours, and a tick is easy enough to forge. You had faith the contracts themselves would stay where you put them. Reasonable faith, as it turned out when I tried to get at them: that lock was incredibly difficult to pick. It took perhaps ten attempts.”

“It pays to invest in quality,” said Cabal faintly. “Why? Why did you take it?”

“When this all started out, all the people who you got to sign were obviously going to the Bad Place no matter what. I had no problem with that. But sometimes you’d be almost at the point of pulling the cap off your pen for some poor schmo whose only sin was being a bit stupid or gullible. Yes, I know those are cardinal sins as far as you’re concerned. Not for me, though. I’d have to jump in and distract you with some more suitable prospect. That’s when I decided I needed a bargaining counter.”

“So you stole the contract.”

“So I stole the contract.”

“But how was that supposed to modify my behaviour if I didn’t know you had it? What use is a threat if you don’t make it?”

“There we have the difference between us. It was never intended as a threat. If we’d arrived here and I’d been convinced that you were doing this the right way, I’d have got this thing signed for you myself. Even somewhere like Penlow, there were still some likely prospects. When you took the soul of that woman in the arcade — ”

“Nea Winshaw,” said Cabal quietly.

“At least you remember her name. Yes, Nea Winshaw; that was it. I gave up hope. I knew you were beyond redemption.”

“Well, I am now,” said Cabal with no rancour. “I’m going to have this mortal coil violently stripped from me on Satan’s own orders and spend the rest of eternity in boiling sulphur or being impaled by tridents or something equally tedious. Thank you, Horst, ever so.”

“I’m sorry, Johannes.”

“You should be.”

“No, I’m not sorry for what I did. I’m sorry for everything that brought us to here and now, everything that meant I had no choice. I am truly, deeply sorry. If it’s any comfort, I still believed you could be saved almost up to the last moment.”

“Saved? From what? The only thing I really needed saving from turns out to be my own brother. Redemption? You keep saying that as if it’s something I needed. Shouldn’t you produce a tambourine from somewhere and start dancing around when you talk like that?”

He rested his crossed arms on his drawn-up knees and rested his forehead on the forearms. His whole life was a waste. His researches hadn’t added a pennyweight’s value to human knowledge. He was no closer to reaching his goal. Soon he would be dead, and everything that he had done would be forgotten or a cheap joke. If he had applied himself to something useless, like money, he would be a rich man now. Ironically, he was a rich man: running a lucrative business that doesn’t pay wages can do that. Unfortunately, he was going to be dead long before he’d even get a chance to do something worthwhile with the wealth. “I should never have gone back to the Druin crypt. I should just have put an advertisement in the entertainment press. ‘Required: deputy manager for travelling carnival. Talent and greed essential. Moralists need not apply.’”

Horst looked down on Cabal, started to open his mouth to speak, but changed his mind. He had the air of somebody who finally realises that he’s been wasting his time. Instead, he walked to the window and looked out at the eastern horizon, tearing up the useless contract as he stood. “The sky’s getting light. It’s almost dawn. I haven’t seen the sun in nine years.” He opened the door and climbed down.