Jonathan Howard - Johannes Cabal - The Fear Institute

Cabal was silent for a long moment. ‘You can travel through time.’ His tone was distracted, thoughtful.

The ghoul chuckled, an unpleasant sound. ‘Then one day all the bodies went – living ones up above, and dead ones down here. All gone. The city was abandoned. No, that’s not a good word. Abandoned makes it sound like they had a choice. Depopulated . That’s better. Like deforested . Chopped down where they stood and taken away. Much better. That has a sense of it. Then we knew they would come. The many-legged ones, with the bat faces and no eyes, full of fever and corruption. And people think we ’re disgusting.’ The ghoul laughed once, a bark. ‘Then the big thing came and killed the many-legs. Crack! Crack! Crack! Off come their legs! Then, crunch! Crush the skulls so no new little baby many-legs pop out of the dead brains. Have to admire the big thing. Thorough. Methodical. Never stopped until the many legs of the many-legs were dangling from gutters and thrown over rooftops and anywhere at all except on the bodies of the many-legs. Every skull . . . crunch ! Good job, big thing! Of course,’ it added, rubbing its chin in a very human gesture, ‘if we go up top it will pull off our legs and crunch our skulls too. So we don’t go up there. That hole was blocked when the many-legs came, unblocked when the many-legs died. Now we peek out – careful and crafty – but the big thing is never about. Haven’t seen it,’ it giggled, as if at a private joke, ‘only hearsay.’

‘What is this “big thing” of yours?’ asked Cabal. He had never had such a lengthy conversation with a ghoul before. Normally they consisted of little more than ‘Get back into your holes, you damned cannibals, before I shoot you,’ and rarely developed into a discourse.

‘Not of mine,’ said the ghoul. ‘Not of mine, oh, no. Of somebody’s, but not mine. They’ve gone away now, but the big thing will be here for ever. Oh,’ it added conversationally, ‘it will kill all of you. Pull off your legs and break your skulls. Will probably pull off your arms, too. A limb’s a limb to the big thing.’

‘We got in easily enough,’ said Cabal, not sounding quite as confident as he would have preferred.

‘It didn’t know you were there. It was bored, lying down in Artisans’ Square, eating weeds. Very bored. Then you made lots of noise and it came looking for you.’

‘We did not make lots of noise,’ snapped Cabal. Then he thought of Bose’s indignant squeal. ‘Well, not very much.’

‘Made enough. The big thing has little ears, but they are very keen.’

Cabal frowned suspiciously. ‘I thought you said you’d never seen it?’

‘Oh, I haven’t.’ The ghoul smiled innocently, which went about as well as could be expected. ‘Not in person.’

‘Why are telling me all this? Why are you talking to me at all? You could have killed me in the dark. What do you want?’

The ghoul’s smile vanished in unexpected ways, as if its face was made of melting wax. When it spoke, the light, bantering tone was gone. ‘I want you to succeed, Johannes Cabal. It is your destiny. If you fail, more than your puerile Fear Institute will be disappointed.’

‘I don’t believe in destiny,’ said Cabal. ‘We make our own futures.’

‘So we do. But I have seen your future, Johannes Cabal, and if you do not find the Phobic Animus, you will lose more than your life or your soul.’

Cabal’s eyebrows raised. ‘I’m not sure I have anything more than those to lose.’

‘Oh, yes, you do. Believe me, necromancer. You do.’ The ghoul paused and looked up at the ceiling, as if listening. When it looked back at Cabal, it said, ‘Your colleagues – I am sure you don’t think of them as friends – are above us now. The two parties are together and they have entered the temple. They are following your tracks through the dust. Soon they will find the disturbance at the place where you fell through into this room and they will attempt to rescue you.’

‘Attempt?’ said Cabal, slowly.

‘Attempt,’ confirmed the ghoul, ‘because you will already have freed yourself.’ It nodded up the short ramp that ran beside it. ‘The door is not locked. I know you would not wish to be indebted to them for rescuing you.’

‘I’m their guide,’ said Cabal. ‘They would be lost without me. Don’t delude yourself into thinking they would rescue me out of any finer feelings.’

‘Guide?’ The ghoul laughed again, a sound like a choking dog. ‘You think they could not hire a hundred reliable men who know these lands better than you, Johannes Cabal? Your usefulness ran out the day you got them to Hlanith.’

‘That is not so,’ said Cabal, although he was racking his brains for a good reason why it was not so, and having little luck in the process.

The ghoul leaped from its resting-place and bounded past him on all fours in a long, fluid lope, like a great whippet with rubber bones. It reached the hole in the brickwork and vanished through it in a blink. A moment later, it leaned its head and shoulders back out and leered at Cabal.

‘Johannes Cabal. Just remember him in your greatest extreme in the next few hours. Remember him.’

‘Remember who?’ said Cabal, raising the light sphere high.

‘Remember Captain Lochery,’ said the ghoul, and vanished back into the shadowed breach.

Chapter 9

IN WHICH A HERMITAGE IS DISCOVERED AND A GREAT TERROR REVEALED

The others were on the point of standing in the wrong place and falling through into the underground chamber, when Johannes Cabal said, ‘Step back from that pew, please. It is the beginning of a short if entertaining ride into the mysteries of the temple’s cellars.’

They turned to see him, standing in a doorway behind them, beating dust from his clothes. ‘We thought—’ Corde stopped himself.

Bose, however, had no such form of manly internal censor. ‘We thought you’d been got! By it! Or something! Oh, Mr Cabal, we were so worried, I can’t tell you!’

‘I think you just did,’ said Cabal, unsure whether to be amused at their childishness or offended that they thought he couldn’t look after himself. Later, he would realise that he had actually been neither of these things but, instead, pleased. ‘Did you see anything else outside?’

‘No,’ said Holk, straight to the point as always. ‘No wamps, and no sight or sound of whatever killed them. Maybe it lost interest.’

Cabal shook his head. ‘No. Whatever else it is, it is very single-minded. It knows we’re here now,’ he looked pointedly at Bose, who blushed, ‘and it won’t stop looking until it finds us and kills us.’

‘It is curious that it is so precise in the way it kills,’ said Shadrach. ‘Not only dismembering its victims, but always making a point of crushing or piercing the skull to prevent a new wamp infestation occurring. For something possessed of such Herculean power,’ and here he gestured at the pathway of shattered walls through the temple, ‘it shows remarkable precision in some of its acts.’

‘It does,’ agreed Cabal. Seen in that light, however, the dismemberment was a strange embellishment. It seemed vengeful and petty, where the skull-breaking was pragmatic and sensible. Still, conjecture was of little use when based upon such a paucity of data. ‘We should move on. The sooner we can find this mysterious hermit and get clear of the city, the happier I think we shall all be.’ There were a few nods to his words, largely from the mercenaries. Cabal picked up his bag from where it lay beside the treacherous pew, and led the way.