Johannes Cabal The Necromancer (12 page)

Cabal tucked the fortune teller’s card away into his breast pocket and touched the brim of his hat. “Good evening, sir,” he said to the large man, “I’m terribly sorry I ran into you like that. My most humble apologies.” The man glared at him, his hands rapidly curled into fists, and he went pale. Cabal knew more than enough about the intricacies of the endocrine system to appreciate that a man who goes pale with anger is a great deal more likely to strike out than one who goes red. Unbidden, Cabal’s free hand moved across to his cane, took the silver skull at its head firmly in his grip, and twisted it slowly until the catch disengaged. He knew Horst would probably regard running a rube through with a sword cane as poor public relations, but in Cabal’s book, “The customer is always right” became academic the instant the customer drew back his fist.

“Please, no, Ted!” A woman appeared around the windward side of the mountainous man. She was as pale as the man—Ted—but for different reasons. Her dark make-up showed livid against the white skin. “Please! He’s not worth it!”

Cabal—who at one time or another had been pursued by village mobs, town mobs, the police, the army, two Inquisitions, and sundry other concerned citizens—was entirely positive that he was worth it. The phrase on her lips, however, had the air of a formula worn by use into a ready invocation, a cantrip against the extremities of Ted. Under such circumstances, Cabal was prepared to forgive her presumption. For Ted, on the other hand, he had conceived a strong dislike, and those for whom Cabal developed a strong dislike rarely prospered.

“Please, allow me to introduce myself,” said Cabal, releasing the head of the cane and using that hand to tap his chest as he spoke. The gesture also confirmed the presence of one of Trubshaw’s contracts, folded and ready in the inside pocket of Cabal’s coat. “I am Johannes Cabal, joint proprietor of this carnival.”

Ted seemed to calm down with remarkable rapidity, Cabal noted. Obviously cowed by authority. His dislike for Ted deepened.

“Allow me to apologise once again for my earlier clumsiness. Please, I’d like to make it up to you in some way. Is there some attraction or sideshow for which I can offer you a complimentary ticket? An exhibit?” Ted’s eyes scanned back and forth, apparently considering his choices. His expression gave no assurances that he would come to a conclusion soon. “A stall, perhaps?”

“You like to shoot,” suggested the woman in a small, cautious voice.

Ted thought about this, then nodded.

“He likes to shoot things,” the woman said to Cabal.

“I shot her dog,” added Ted.

It took an effort, but Cabal didn’t show even the flicker of a reaction.

“If you’d come this way, please, sir,” he said in neutral tones, indicating the way to the shooting gallery.

The shooting gallery was, in common with all the carnival’s stalls, a carefully judged amalgam of every fairground shooting gallery that had ever been or ever would be, an archetype, a functional mean. It offered the opportunity to shoot at tin silhouettes of little men standing to attention, tin silhouettes of caricature ducks, and tin silhouettes of clay pipes, which processed and spun across a pellet-peppered backdrop. The weapons it offered were break-barrel .22 air-rifles—Cabal had been mildly amused to discover that they were ageing Webleys, of the same manufacture as the .577 Boxer revolver currently lying in his desk drawer—their sights all artistically crocked so as to be worse than useless. In return for the feat of striking down moving targets with ill-maintained rifles, the stall offered the chance to take home desperately ill goldfish, disconcerting Kewpie dolls, decorative knick-knacks of dubious quality and taste, and ill-proportioned baboons stuffed with kapok.

Cabal arrived with Ted, the latter carving a channel through the crowd much like a surly ice-breaker. In their wake, Ted’s girlfriend, Rachel, walked quickly, head down, giving apologies to anybody who looked like they were owed one. Cabal quietly explained to the stallholder that Ted was to be allowed five free games, and to be awarded any prize that he might win just as if he had paid. Bowing a little too stiffly to be truly unctuous, Cabal withdrew to a safe distance and observed.

Ted turned out to be an effective marksman, inaccurate sights or not. He cracked open the rifle as if it had insulted him, thumbed in a slug, snapped it shut, raised it to his shoulder, and fired with barely a pause until all five slugs were gone and two unhappy little tin ducks, two tin men, and a tin pipe had been laid low. The stallholder showed him the utter tat that was his for the asking, but Ted waved such very minor temptations aside. He intended to accrue five tokens from his five gratis games and go home with an altogether classier piece of tat from the top shelf of prizes.

Cabal watched, discomfited. He had been banking on the nefarious true purpose of the carnival making itself known in certain stealthy, subtle ways only evident to the watchful and educated observer, if for no other reason than that that was its nature. Instead, he was looking at an oaf doing quite well for himself in an egotistical show of physical superiority. He might as well have been watching professional sports. In short, unless the carnival was being so stealthy and subtle about its soul-stealing that even Cabal couldn’t see it happening, then he could only conclude that he would have to move matters along himself.

Everything at the carnival was ultimately dedicated to taking the souls of the unwary. That was a given. Therefore, unlikely as it seemed, even the shooting gallery must be capable of this. Cabal didn’t know how, but surely the stallholder did? As proprietor, it was merely Cabal’s role to make the decision, to give the signal, and then stand back and watch the carnival draw the snare tight around the prey. Well, he had made the decision, so it would seem that he should give the signal. Cabal caught the stallholder’s eye while Ted was mowing down more hapless tin casualties, and gestured in a way he hoped would imply that the stallholder should get on with securing Ted’s soul.

The stallholder stared blankly at Cabal.

Cabal tried again, but the stallholder just cocked his head on one side and looked at him with an expression of deep bewilderment. Cabal tried a different soul-stealing gesture, and then another.

With a sudden mild breeze, Horst was standing beside him. Horst took a look at Ted. “Oh, you found him, then. Well done.”

Cabal ignored his brother and carried on trying to semaphore his intentions to the shooting gallery.

“Johannes,” said Horst after some moments of watching him, “what are you doing?”

“Gesturing,” said Cabal, continuing to gesture.

“Gesturing, is it?” This apparently impressed Horst. “It’s very good.”

Cabal ignored him. Horst followed the line of gesticulation to the shooting gallery, where the stallholder was just handing out the next fistful of .22 slugs to Ted while keeping one curious eye on Cabal.

“What exactly is it that you’re trying to communicate with this … ummm …”

“Gesturing.”

“Quite. This gesturing?”

Cabal ceased gesturing, partially because it didn’t seem to be working and partially because he was developing cramp.

“I’m trying to get that idiot on the shooting gallery to do something diabolical so I can get a contract signed. It doesn’t seem to work.”

“No manual, I take it?”

“None.”

“Actually, brother mine, that was along the lines of a snipe at your lack of comprehension and imagination.” As Cabal turned his attention from Ted to glare at Horst, so Horst turned his own attention from his brother and to Ted. “He’s a very good shot, isn’t he? I think he’s going to get one of the top prizes. Wait here a mo’.”

Another breeze, and Cabal was alone. Another breeze, and Horst was back, with company. In his hand he held one of the top prizes, a doll of a precocious young woman with a disproportionately large head that, in comparison, made her disproportionately large bust and bottom look properly to scale with the rest of the body. The doll, its head made from celluloid and its body from cloth, had a coquettish expression on its face. Horst angled the whole doll back and forth, and Cabal noticed one eye winked. The overall effect was of a repulsive intimacy. He was very unwilling to take it when Horst proffered it to him.

“What do you expect me to do with this?” said Cabal, as he finally took it, carefully, between forefinger and thumb.

In answer, Horst waggled his fingers at it and adopted a significant expression.

“Are you gesturing?” demanded Cabal.

Horst sighed. “You’ve still got a good quantity of diabolical influence to call on, haven’t you?” He nodded at the doll. “Stick a jigger in there.”

“Stick a …? Have you lost your senses? Look at him!” He nodded at Ted. “The man must shave with a lawnmower!”

Horst looked at the proposed victim. “He certainly has his hair cut by one,” he conceded.

“What possible use is a doll, demoniacally influenced or otherwise, when you’re dealing with a man like that?”

“Have you any interest in psychology?” asked Horst.

“Certainly not,” replied Cabal. “I’m a scientist.”

“Oh, so dismissive. Put the ’fluence on Trixie here and then allow me to demonstrate.”

“Trixie?” said Cabal, not sure he’d heard correctly.

Horst grunted with impatience. “Just do it, will you? He’s almost got his five tokens!”

Cabal saw it was true, and also saw that he had no better ideas himself. He held the doll at arm’s length and muttered, “I invoke thee,” under his breath. He felt the vague sense of evil being directed through him—a sensation somewhere between grief and toothache, with which he had grown familiar during the carnival’s creation but never even faintly inured to—and then it was done. He quickly handed the doll back to Horst before it grew fangs and attacked him, but it did nothing at all.

“Good” was all Horst said, and then he blurred into not-thereness.

Cabal saw him suddenly snap back into visibility at the side of the shooting gallery. He no longer had the doll; it had been returned to the middle of the top row of shelves.

Horst’s timing was perfect—Ted had just won his fifth token. He looked along the prizes, but his gaze did not linger on the doll.

“The doll’s pretty,” said Rachel. Ted slid her a look of corrosive disdain.

“It’s my prize,” he said. “I choose.”

“That’s lucky,” said Horst, who had suddenly appeared farther along the gallery’s counter. “I quite fancy getting that doll, and it seems to be the only one they have.”

Ted turned to look past Rachel at Horst. “It’s a girl’s doll,” he said in a tone that implied that he had made deductions as to Horst’s sexual preferences, that he found them contemptible and disgusting, and that by association, he found Horst contemptible and disgusting, too.

“Quite,” said Horst, paying for five games. “It’s for my girl. What’s the point of doing well on something like this if you can’t have bragging rights?” He loaded his rifle. “I win that doll, give it to her, tell her how difficult it was to win, how good I am.” He aimed. “Then she’s all mine.” He fired. A tin man took the slug square between the eyes and flipped backwards. He lowered the rifle and grinned at Ted. “That’s psychology.”

Ted didn’t care about psychology, not even when it so obviously lacked logic. He cared a lot about ownership, though.

“I’ll have the doll,” he said to the stallholder.

“Oh!” said Horst in convincing disappointment, as Ted received the doll and then thrust it into Rachel’s arms with scarcely a glance. He walked off, Rachel clutching the doll to her chest.

Horst was watching them vanish into the crowd as Cabal joined him. “And that’s psychology?” said Cabal.

“Yes. Not what I told him, but certainly what I did to him.” He looked sideways at his brother. “You do know what went on there?”

“I’m not a complete dolt. I know spitefulness when I see it. There is something I don’t understand, however.”

“Oh?”

“Why exactly are you helping me in such an overt manner? You made no bones about how little you like what is going on here, and insisted you wanted no direct involvement in the carnival’s … core business, shall we say? Why the change in heart?”

Horst looked thoughtful. “Well, Johannes, it’s …”

When the silence drew out, Cabal turned to ask for the rest of the sentence. Horst had gone. Cabal swore, an ancient expletive involving sexual congress between an extinct tribe and an extinct species.

Now what? His inclination was to shadow Ted and his miserable girlfriend; he couldn’t help but admit that he was very curious to know how the doll was supposed to make a man sell his soul away. With great reluctance, however, he decided trailing them around would probably be counterproductive. Horst and he had taken a direct interest, they had burnt up a little more of Satan’s blood; if they needed to get more involved still, then that would do for next time, and Ted could be considered a failed experiment.

Cabal went back to the House of Medical Monstrosity to recover his straw boater from a small boy.

Rachel was outwardly as happy as she could be while associated with Ted, but inside she was wrought with conflicting thoughts. On the one hand, it was very kind of Ted to have won the doll for her, even if she had a suspicion that he had done so purely to spite that nice-looking man at the shooting gallery. The fact that it was only a suspicion and not a definite fact in her mind was evidence of the filter of delusion she had woven about her.

In her honest opinion, Ted was a nice, decent man. Yes, he had his little foibles—the uninhibited way his fists tended to travel about, his perfectly reasonable desire to get drunk four times a week, his manly tendency to see insults and slights all about, at which point his fists would again become uninhibited—indeed, positively libertine—in their desire to conjoin with chins and eye-sockets—but what man didn’t?

Most of them, as it happened, but it was too late. For now Ted was her metric for men, and she had, therefore, an instinctive knowledge of the truth of her belief, a gut feeling. She had faith that this was about as good as it got: not perfect, but she was sure that, by the power of her love, she could change him for the better.