Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

CHAPTER 13 in which the carnival of discord opens its gates for the last time and things go terribly wrong

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.

Cabal turned, the whistle dying on his lips. “What do you mean?”

“You, whistling ‘Happy Days Are Here Again.’ You have a perverse sense of humour.” Horst pulled on his coat and top hat. “If you’ll forgive me, I don’t like the atmosphere in here very much.” The door opened and shut, and Johannes Cabal was alone once more, in all senses of the word.

Cabal looked at the staves with disbelief. He leaned forward over the notebook and rested his fingertip on the first note. “Hap-py days are here a-gain,” he sang quietly as his finger tapped from note to note. Yes, Horst was quite right. In abrupt disgust, he tore the pages out and threw them in the wastepaper basket. “Very funny. Most amusing.” He pulled on his coat and hat and went to find Horst. Somewhere, somebody laughed.

Horst was walking in long-legged strides between the stands, stalls, and sideshows, pointedly ignoring the riggers that approached him asking for clarifications of his half-written plans. Johannes Cabal had no trouble finding him; he just followed the trail of disgruntled men with wilting bits of paper in their hands. He caught up with Horst by the Mysteries of Egypt, where Cleopatra had managed to buttonhole him. As Cabal approached, he could hear her haranguing Horst.

“Woss all this, then? Eh?” she squalled, waving a sheet of paper under Horst’s nose.

“It’s your revised script,” said Horst with uncharacteristic irritation. “Learn it. Now.”

“Woss wrong wiv me ol’ script, eh?” She changed gear and her voice became mellifluous, sensuous. “I” — she breathed the word — “am Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, mistress” — this with a significant look — “of the Nile. Come with me and discover the pleasures … and the terrors of the ancient world.” She went from smoky seductress to Billingsgate fishwife in much less than a second. “There! W’a were wrong wiv that, eh? I mean, that were the dog’s bollocks, that were. Now you’ve given me this crap!” She waved the sheet in his face. “Woss all this shite ’baht dynasties an’ stuff? People dun wonna know ’baht that! They wanna ’ear ’baht shaggin’ an’ murder an’ people ’avin’ their brains fished aht their noses an’ stuff!”

Horst was never impolite to ladies. Unfortunately for Cleopatra, she wasn’t only definitely not a lady, she wasn’t even technically human.

“Shut up,” said Horst in a cold hiss. He sounded a lot like his brother. “Just shut up. Come midnight, you’re dust and ashes, just like everybody else in this travelling nightmare, so I really don’t care what you think. You learn the script I’ve given you and you deliver it properly. If I come around this show later and find you delivering the old one, or deliberately making a bad job of the new one, you’re not even going to make it to midnight. Do you understand me?”

Cleopatra blinked. “All right,” she said in a very small voice.

“Horst,” called Cabal as he approached, “Horst, what has got into you?” Cleopatra looked fearfully at the pair of them. “You are dismissed,” said Cabal, and she ran off into the sideshow like a frightened kohl-smirched bunny.

“What has got into me?” Horst looked at the dark sky. When he looked back down, his expression was one of purest animosity. “Where do I begin?”

Cabal’s mind worked quickly to isolate an event that might have caused such a rapid deterioration in relations. “This is about that woman last night, isn’t it? The one with the child?”

“Yes, this is about the woman last night. The one with the child. What did you do to her? What dirty little stunt did you pull?”

“I granted her wish. That’s all.”

“And she signed over her soul for it.”

“No. She didn’t. She signed over her soul so that I’d take the wish away again. She wanted the child dead, Horst. She’s no angel.”

Horst waved his finger in Cabal’s face. “No, she didn’t want her baby dead. For crying out loud, Johannes, she just wanted a little help. Couldn’t you see that? Couldn’t you see that she just wanted a little help? She needed a babysitter, not a plan for murder.”

“I. Don’t. Care. What. She. Needed,” said Cabal, feeling his temper stirring. “She was prepared to sign for what she got. That’s all that matters.”

“‘That’s all that matters’? That is not all that matters, by a very long chalk. She’s a person, a human being, a living woman. Not just another name on one of your forms. You’ve ruined her life, you know that? She knows what’s waiting for her now, hanging over her.”

“I didn’t hear you make this kind of fuss over any — ”

“Pay attention, Johannes! The difference is that she hadn’t done anything wrong until you railroaded her into it. You! You’ve finally become what you were always meant to be.”

Cabal’s sixth sense belatedly started tingling. He had the faint impression that somebody was making a fool of him, had been making a fool of him for the last year, somebody who smelled quite strongly of brimstone. “What do you mean?” he asked cautiously.

“You are such a fool,” said Horst. “That’s what this whole exercise has really been about. I thought you’d have worked it out a long, long time ago. Old Hob down below isn’t interested in a pile of souls that he would have got anyway. He wanted to push you into taking one. Corrupting one. That business with Billy Butler was to make you desperate, make you forget that somewhere inside” — Horst’s voice cracked slightly — “there’s a good man. My little brother, Johannes. That’s all gone now. You’re not trying to beat the devil anymore. You’re doing his work for him. You’re not my brother anymore. I can’t… I won’t help you anymore.” Horst turned and started to walk away.

“Horst?” Cabal’s voice was small, disbelieving. Horst braced himself against sentiment, kept walking. “Horst, I need you. I can’t do this alone. I’m so close. Horst!” His brother’s stride never faltered. Johannes Cabal’s temper was a volatile quantity at the best of times, and he could feel it riding in his gullet now. This time, however, it was different.

There was something else there, a blossoming flower of easy violence that flooded up through his chest and found expression on his tongue, a faint taste of aniseed. “You will help me, Horst,” he said, his voice stronger, “or you’ll stay the way you are now, forever.”

Horst stopped. He stood still a long moment and then turned. “What,” he said quietly, “did you just say?”

You have power over him, thought Cabal, although part of him wondered if somebody else was doing his thinking for him. He can’t talk to you like that. “I said, you’ll do what you’re told or you can stay a parasite for the rest of time.”

Horst took a moment to consider his words. He walked right up to his brother until they were nose to nose and said, “Go fuck yourself, Johannes.” There was a sudden breeze as air rushed into the space that used to be full of Horst. Cabal looked around, blinking. He was quite alone.

Who needs him? said a small voice in his heart. You’re the man with the plan. Get to it. One last soul needed. Horst was just holding you back with all his stupid little scruples. Now you don’t have to pussyfoot around looking for somebody who wants to give their soul away. Now you can find a likely candidate and take it.

Frank Barrow moved with surprising stealth through the shadows behind the sideshows. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he was damn sure that it wasn’t in plain sight. He’d turned up at the turnstiles, handed over his complimentary ticket, noticed that almost everybody else in the queue had one, too, and had then entered the carnival ground with the sullen expression of somebody who expected to be entertained. He’d stood by a ginnel formed between the Parapsychological Perplex Experience (the Ghost Train) and the Sociopathic Mind (a Chamber of Horrors stuffed to the rafters with waxworks of infamous murderers)[4] and made a great show of winding his watch. The instant he wasn’t observed, he’d faded into the background. Now he shook the rust off his old shadowing skills and saw what he might see. He’d stumbled upon the Cabal brothers having some sort of argument but hadn’t been able to get close enough to find out what it had been about. An odd thing, though: there had been a point when he’d been sure that Horst was about to punch Johannes, Barrow had blinked, and Johannes had suddenly been alone. He wasn’t quite sure where Horst had got to, and, judging by the way he’d been casting about, neither had Johannes. Then Johannes Cabal had paused, and a very unpleasant smile had crept across his face, like a melanoma in time-lapse. It was another odd thing in and of itself, because Cabal had looked very different for some reason, almost like a different person. Then, full of a sense of purpose that Barrow found alarming in its suddenness, Cabal had strode off into the carnival’s main thoroughfare.

Now Barrow was moving quietly, unseen, but what he was seeing was worrying. He’d spent a lot of time in his life in places of hard, manual work and was used to their rhythms and nuances. Here there were none. He’d asked at the pub in town: what were the riggers like? The landlord had shrugged; he had no clue. None had been in. Barrow thought this was downright perverse. Unless the Cabals had manned their carnival with Quakers, Moslems, and assorted other teetotallers, then there was no obvious explanation. Unless, bizarre as it sounded, they simply didn’t drink. Following a hunch, he’d been to the grocers and asked a few questions there, too. Yes, the carnival had bought supplies, but nowhere near as much as might be expected for such a large operation. “They’re on starvation rations,” the grocer had said miserably. “They hardly bought enough to feed twenty.” Looking at a couple of the strapping men standing by a big wheel, he found the idea of anybody here starving very difficult to believe. He watched them as they smiled and waved at a crowd of teenagers going by. Then another curious thing happened.

The instant the crowd passed out of sight, the two riggers froze solid. Barrow thought that they’d seen something and shielded his eyes against the fierce, clear light of the stringed bulbs, but there was nothing to see, and after a moment he realised that was what they were looking at. There was nothing there, and nobody. Nobody to pretend for, nobody to go through the act of being real people for.

Barrow could have waited for somebody else to come by to test his hypothesis. He could even have walked around and by them to see them go through their paces on his behalf. He could have, but he didn’t, and he didn’t because he’d as willingly gargle with toilet cleaner. In his extensive experience, out of harm’s way was a marvellous and worthwhile place to be, and he wanted to maintain his tenancy there as long as was humanly possible. Dancing up and down in front of a couple of enormous things with arms and legs that did a reasonable impersonation of people might be construed as provocative. “Softly, softly, catchee monkey” had been the unofficial motto of the police when he’d carried a warrant card. When the monkey looked like it would have little difficulty tearing your head off and spitting down your neck, it was particularly good advice.

Instead, he vanished back into the shadows to find more data. He couldn’t hypothesise without data. When Frank Barrow built a case, it stayed airtight at two hundred atmospheres.

There was none of the behind-scenes stuff that one might expect, he discovered as he peered through tent flaps and listened at ajar doors. Everything was as dead as dust when the townsfolk weren’t there. Nobody spoke, nobody moved (although he was sure he’d heard a mass gasp of exhaled breath when a party had left the hall of murderers in the Sociopathic Mind). Dead as dust. Cold as clay. The cogs of the idea that had started forming earlier were beginning to mesh. He didn’t like the look of the machine that they were forming at all. It seemed too fantastic, like a heart pacemaker made from balsa wood and chewing gum. He must have it wrong. He just couldn’t quite see how, though. After all, if it’s got four legs, yaps, and wants to be best pals with your shin, then it’s likely to be a dog. Barrow felt he had enough circumstantial evidence that, if he threw a rubber bone, this particular idea would bring it back for him, plus a large puddle of drool. Barrow had a bad feeling that he knew exactly what was going on.

“I know you,” said a voice quietly behind him. Barrow whirled to find Horst standing there. “You’re Frank Barrow.” Horst raised his hands in supplication. “Really, I mean you no harm.”

Barrow belatedly realised that he had settled into a boxer’s stance. He grunted with embarrassment and straightened up. Horst looked at him coolly. “I’d got the impression from somewhere that you were Penlow’s mayor or some such. Do your duties include skulking around visiting carnivals?”

“How long have you been watching me?” said Barrow, with some bluster thrown in for effect. He needed time to get over his surprise.

“Me? Oh, I get around. I’m here, there …” Horst seemed to turn into a long smudge on Barrow’s retinas, and then he was standing twenty feet away. “Everywhere,” he said, appearing abruptly not two paces away.

Barrow gawped. He’d seen some neat tricks before, but this aced them all. “How do you do that?” he managed to ask.

Horst shrugged dismissively, as if it were on par with ear waggling. “Practice. Natural talent. Supernatural powers. Who knows? Who cares? I don’t and you shouldn’t. You should be answering my question.”

“I wasn’t doing anything wrong, what business is it of yours?”

“You might not have been doing anything wrong, but you may have been considering it. Certain authorities hold that the thought is morally equivalent to the expression. That seems like an auto-flagellomaniac’s charter to me. Are you a moral man, Mr. Barrow?”

“Eh?” Barrow had been considering escape routes and had just realised what a pointless endeavour it was when up against a man who could break the sound barrier in carpet slippers. “I used to be a police officer.”

Horst raised his eyebrows to demonstrate polite interest. “Really? Well, that’s nice, of course, but, as I was saying, are you a moral man?”

Barrow let that pass without challenge. “Yes, I think I am. Are you, Mr. Cabal?”

“‘Mr. Cabal’ is my brother. Call me Horst. And, yes, I am.” He said the words again, as if realising the truth in them for the first time. “I am a moral man. There are certain things that have to be done, no matter how difficult they are. Forget about blood and water. I have to forget about blood. And you” — he looked into Barrow’s eyes, and Barrow suddenly found he couldn’t move, could barely even breathe — “why do you come here when you’re so afraid?”

Barrow would like to have said something doughty, but his muscles didn’t seem to be returning calls today.

Horst continued speaking. “Don’t give me the saloon-bar talk about not having a nerve in your body. I can smell fear, and you’re upwind of me. What brings you here when you’re so afraid? Your morals?” Horst softened his glance, and Barrow could talk again.

“Yes, I suppose so. I’ve …” Now he was here, it sounded foolish. Foolish but no less true for all that. “I’ve come to stop you.”

Horst showed astonishment, going so far as to tap his chest. “Stop me? In that case, I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted trip. I’ve already slowed to a dead halt. A very dead halt. You wouldn’t believe the half of it.”

“Nea Winshaw. Does that name mean anything to you?” said Barrow sharply.

“No. Should it?”

“She claims, claimed, that this carnival was instrumental in the apparent death of her child.”

“The woman in the penny arcade,” said Horst almost to himself.

“That’s right. She made a remarkable confession.”

Horst didn’t seem surprised. Barrow, who had never willingly leapt to a conclusion in his life, carefully put up a stepladder beside one and ascended cautiously. “You mean her story’s true?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t heard it. But whatever it is, yes, it’s true.”

Despite Barrow’s hunch, it was still a shock to discover that Nea Winshaw’s extraordinary story was true even in part. And with that discovery, the idea that had been gently assembling itself for the last day finally came together, lit its lights, and puffed into action. “Oh my God. Johannes Cabal is a necromancer,” said Barrow slowly, horror-struck. It explained so much, but taking it in was still so difficult. Yes, there was magic in the world, but it was so rare in these modern days. He’d only had to deal with it on a handful of occasions, and even then it had been of the minor hedge-witch sort. Necromancers were at the extreme edge of the world’s magic, they were very, very rare, and every time one was detected by justice — state or rough — they became that much rarer.

Horst was moderately impressed. “Not bad. You must have been a good policeman. Any other conclusions, Hercule?”

“I checked the file on Rufus Maleficarus — ”

“Oh, that’s not fair. If people are going to check the facts every time I open my mouth, where does that leave most of my conversation?”

“He was dangerous all right but not a necromancer, which isn’t to say he hadn’t tried. Your brother did kill him, though. Quite the local hero in Murslaugh. I sent a telegram to the chief inspector there. There were some other incidents that occurred at about the same time. They’ve talked themselves into believing that some of Maleficarus’ mob was still on the loose and causing mischief. Funny thing was that they never found a single one of the lunatics after Maleficarus caught three bullets. Why do you suppose that was?”

“Well, obviously, they came to work for this carnival.”

“Obviously. Your brother has already told me as much, perfectly candidly. It’s only obvious to you because you’ve been sheltering them.”

“Me?” Horst laughed. “What makes you think I have any say in anything that matters around here? I didn’t shelter them, they just turned up holding Johannes’s coattails like a lot of moonstruck sheep. If moonstruck sheep hold coattails. Which seems unlikely, now that I stop to consider it.”

Barrow wasn’t in the mood for analysing shaky similes. “Why? What does your brother hope to achieve? What is all this in aid of?”

“Now, that I can’t possibly tell you. After all, blood’s thicker than water. I could never deliberately dish up my little brother.”

“Little brother? But he looks older than you.”

“You know, I was just considering that very thing the other day. I suppose he must have overtaken me in the ageing stakes at some point.”

Barrow’s idea machine was whizzing its cogs gamely by now, and every little datum was crunched up, associated like with like, and quickly delivered as gorgeous little conclusions in engaging presentation cases. This latest piece of information was duly processed and popped up moments later, labelled “Horst Cabal has probably been dead at some point.”

“You’re dead,” said Barrow, hoping he was reading Horst’s character properly.

“Undead, technically. Not Johannes’s doing, I hasten to add. Not directly, at any rate. He had promised to find some way of bringing me back to the land of the living. Not that I’m not in the land of the living now, you understand? I’m speaking figuratively. Now I’m not so sure. I need a little time to think.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Neither do I, I’m afraid. That’s why I need to think. It all comes to some sort of conclusion tonight, one way or the other, and Johannes, I don’t know what to make of him anymore. I want you to bear one thing in mind.” Horst stepped closer and said conspiratorially, “He’s a desperate man. More so than you might think. A great deal more than I’d have thought.”

“Why don’t you stop him?”

“I’m his brother. I can’t, I simply can’t. I’ve done all I can, and it’s come to nothing. You, though, perhaps you can do something before it’s too late. Before it’s too late,” he said again, as if it were already so. “I’ve got to go. Good luck, Mr. Barrow.”

“Wait! Just a second!” Barrow didn’t want Horst pulling his vanishing act just yet. “There’s still something I don’t understand. What is your brother doing? Why is he here?”

“I suggest that you ask Miss Winshaw.”

“She’s not saying anything.”

“Does she need to?”

Barrow thought back to what he knew about her case. The facts were impenetrable enough. Perhaps he was looking too hard. When she’d been brought in as a murderer, she’d seemed appalled at what she’d done. Her main thought had been horror at the act itself. She’d confessed immediately and comprehensively, obviously seeking some sort of absolution by throwing her own life away. She’d seemed very relieved when she’d put her name on the confession.

Then Johannes Cabal came a-calling. In rapid succession, her baby had turned out to be nowhere near as dead as two experienced doctors had believed, her confession had miraculously disappeared, and she’d started denying everything. Anything else? Why, yes, of course. Her entire attitude had changed. She’d become positively doom-haunted. The only thing that she’d shown any animation about at all was the child’s recovery. Not because it meant there was no longer any charge against her, but for the pure fact that her baby lived. For herself, her horizons seemed to have drawn so close she could touch them. What had blighted her expectations? What could Cabal have said? What could a necromancer have said? What do they deal in? Life and death.

“Souls,” said Barrow finally.

“Give the man a coconut,” said Horst. He paused and looked around. “Start being very careful now,” he said urgently, and blurred into the night.

Barrow didn’t have very long to wonder after Horst’s mercurial departure. “Mr. Barrow, what are you doing here?” He turned at the sound of Johannes Cabal’s voice.

“I was just having a stroll around, Mr. Cabal. Taking in the sights.”

Cabal smiled very slightly and gestured at their surroundings. “There are no sights here, Mr. Barrow. You’re missing all the fun of the fair.” He looked around the clearing. “Where’s your daughter, Mr. Barrow? The delightful Leonie?” Barrow didn’t like the way he said it at all.

“She’s at home. She sends her regrets but is unable to attend.”

“Unable to attend. You make it sound very formal, Mr. Barrow. But, of course, you used to be a police officer.”

“Retired.”

“Yes, retired. Some people have a lot of trouble giving up their old jobs, I believe. Keep finding themselves slipping back into old work habits. Take, for example” — he looked around as if he might find an example floating in mid-air; instead, he found it directly in front of him — “you. Do you ever find yourself looking for crime where there is none? Find it difficult to meet people without assuming they have some sort of dreadful conspiracy up their sleeve? Find yourself sneaking around places like a thief in the night?”

“No,” replied Barrow honestly. “Not these days.” The two men stood perhaps half a dozen yards apart in the shadows of the sideshows, half a dozen yards of grass between them. To Barrow it seemed like the gulf between galaxies. To Barrow it didn’t seem nearly far enough. There was something unaccountably different between the man who stood before him now and the man he’d spoken to that morning. That Cabal had seemed flawed and human. This one, however, was behaving like a stage villain. His arch manner and verbal fencing were beginning to irritate Barrow. He had to be careful — it was far too easy to give away too much. Why didn’t he just set up a magic-lantern display for Cabal entitled “Everything I Know About You” while he was about it? “Unless it’s for a worthy cause.”

“How mysterious. And here I was, sure that we’d come to some sort of understanding. And here we are, with you sneaking around away from the thoroughfare without another soul to be seen.”

“Poor pickings for you, then,” said Barrow, and cursed the words as soon as they were out of his lips.

If he was expecting a witty riposte from Cabal, he was mistaken. Cabal simply ran at him. Halfway across the distance, Barrow heard a noise he hadn’t heard since he’d been on the beat in the thieves’ kitchens of the city, the distinctive click of a switchblade, and knew that Cabal intended to kill him there and then. As Cabal reached him, his arm extended like a lance tipped with three inches of scalpel-sharp steel, Barrow allowed himself to start falling sideways. He grabbed Cabal’s knife hand and forced him to keep running straight over Barrow’s shins. Cabal turned a full cartwheel in mid-air before landing on the tips of his toes and sprawling face-down on the turf. Barrow wasn’t too concerned about Cabal’s martial artistry on this showing, but he could and would surely call on his small army of thugs. Discretion seemed appropriate, and he ran for the bright lights. Perhaps if he could find an off-duty policeman he might stand a chance.

Almost a minute passed.

Johannes Cabal rolled onto his back and slowly drew the knife from his clothes. He’d been very, very lucky. The blade had scraped obtusely across his side, the waistcoat and shirt having tangled and deflected it. He threw the bloodied knife on the grass in disgust, his gloves quickly joining it. He probed at the wound with his fingertips and winced. Very lucky. He stanched the cut with his handkerchief and applied pressure while he tried to reorder his thoughts. He looked at the blood on his free hand. What had come over him? Violence was loathsome but occasionally necessary; he had no problems with that. But this? He’d been standing there talking like an idiot, Barrow had rather unwisely given away too much (How had he learned the truth of the carnival? No matter, there were more important things to attend to), and, the next thing he knew, he’d had his knife in his hand and was bearing down on Barrow like a member of one of these childish street gangs he’d heard tell of. It was so unlike him. Of course, Barrow would have to go, but it could have been done with a little more forethought. Now he was off and running and spreading fear and apprehension, and it was almost as if Cabal was working against himself.

“Oh,” he said sharply. “I see.”

A few minutes later, Cabal appeared at the popcorn stand and helped himself to the salt tub with bloodied fingers. Outstanding orders for cartons promptly all changed from salted to sweet. “I abjure thee,” he snapped furiously, and threw the salt over his left shoulder. The fascinated onlookers could have sworn they heard a yelp from thin air. Cabal straightened up slightly as if a weight had been lifted from him. The pervasive taste of aniseed left his palate. “Right, where’s Bones?” he demanded of the popcorn lady before winding his way off through the crowd.

Down in Hell, Ratuth Slabuth watched with polite interest as Mimble Scummyskirts, an imp of notorious and incandescent fury, washed her smarting eyes with warm saline. “That is sterile, isn’t it?”

“’Ow the fenk should I know, eh?” replied Mimble with the easy lack of delicacy that would result in rapid promotion up the noncommissioned ranks. “Wot a sod. Jus’ doin’ me pisking job, and — bof! — I gets a face full of kelching salt. Exorcised, sweet as kiss-me-skenk! The parbo!”[5]

“Don’t give yourself airs,” said Ratuth Slabuth. “You’re not actually capable of possession, so it wasn’t really an exorcism. You could only colour his actions, not control them.” And a fine mess you made of that, he thought. “It was more of an eviction.”

Mimble left General Slabuth in no doubt that the difference between eviction and exorcism was a petty one, of concern only to armchair generals who never got off their big fat —

At which point Ratuth Slabuth, who was nowhere near as refined as he pretended, squashed Mimble Scummyskirts into an aniseed-flavoured smear with his thumb and went to report to Satan, leaving the smear to think really bad thoughts for the six hundred and sixty-six years it would take to re-form.