The Brothers Cabal (2 page)

Cabal looked at the man, and he was astonished, and yet so profoundly relieved that when he spoke, the first word was almost a sob. ‘You,' he said, his voice thin and weak from illness and disuse. ‘It's you.

‘But … you're dead…'

His brother, Horst Cabal, sat upon the edge of the bed and looked at him. He was a man who had lived, died briefly, become undead, become very dead indeed, and yet now seemed to be undead again.

‘Hmmm,' he agreed a mite awkwardly, as if being found alive (of sorts) when he was supposed to be profoundly dead was morally equivalent to using the wrong spoon at dinner.

The awkwardness extended into an awkward pause. ‘Would you…' Horst looked off for a moment, finding something fascinating about the picture rail. He looked back at Cabal. ‘Would you like some soup, Johannes?'

*   *   *

The soup—it was chicken—was good, though that was not the unusual thing about it. That it had been prepared by a man who was dead twice over was more notable. As Johannes Cabal—an invalid of some little infamy—sat upright in his bed and slowly sipped the soup, he considered that life was an unpredictable sort of thing. If past events had been different by one single factor, he would probably be a solicitor by this time, he would likely be married, his father would still be alive, his mother would not have disowned him, and his brother would not have died twice and now be making him soup. It was hard to characterise his feelings as to how such things could come to pass; he had to make do with, ‘It's a funny old world.'

The wind moaned around the eaves of Cabal's house, a nondescript three-storey structure common in the cantons of the
petit bourgeois
found in most English towns, rendered descript by standing in the splendid isolation of a remote hillside. It had clearly not been built there, but the mechanism by which it had somehow been transplanted complete and without damage remained a mystery to man and civic planner alike. Behind it sat a small back garden with an herbaceous border that needed attention, and a woodshed from which very occasionally movement could be heard. Before it was the small tangled rose garden within which tiny creatures of fey descent, malign intent, and ill manners hid and watched. The garden and the path, which led from one of those waist-high gates intended to mark off a property line rather than represent any serious barrier to the front door of the house, was bordered by a low stone wall that was no more of an impedance than the gate. In truth, there was more to the apparently inconsequential wall and gate than met the eye, a state of affairs that extended to much of the house and its contents.

Cabal regarded the black panes of the window, beyond which the small valley his house overlooked lay in darkness, and he listened to the wind blow. When he felt a light breeze disturb the hairs on his arm, however, he knew it was nothing to do with the weather.

‘I am not easily astonished, Horst,' he said, continuing to look at the dark glass. ‘But in this you have succeeded.' He turned his head to regard his brother. Horst was standing by the door in his shirtsleeves, looking very much at home. Then again, this
had
once been his home. Cabal noted that the door was closed. ‘I didn't even hear the door open and shut. Your abilities have progressed since last we met.'

‘Perhaps I didn't open the door, Johannes,' said his brother. Horst still looked like a man in his early twenties even though he was older than Cabal, at least according to the calendar. Being dead suited him very well. He was still abominably virile, and thoughtlessly handsome in the same way that had always made Cabal hate the sight of him. Light brown hair, only a few shades away from blond, and blue eyed, he would look good in a sack. Still, sibling rivalry was a thing for one's youth, and should be put away when one is in a serious profession such as necromancy and one's brother is one of the blood-drinking undead. ‘Perhaps I turned into a cloud of vapour and came through the keyhole.'

‘And perhaps you transformed yourself into a flood of eyewash and burbled beneath it. Don't patronise me. I have some knowledge of your kind.'

Once, Horst might have risen to a comment like ‘your kind'. Now, however, he sat on the side of Cabal's bed and murmured, ‘The time has come, the Walrus said.'

Cabal regarded his soup. It was a phrase from their childhood; whenever things got out of hand and the air needed clearing, the moment would be presaged by that little bit of Carroll.

‘True enough. There is a great deal to be said. I doubt shoes and ships and sealing wax will be the half of it.' He took the tray from his lap and was just manoeuvring awkwardly to put it on the bedside cabinet when Horst appeared by him. There was no intermediate walking around the bed; he simply appeared with no more fuss than another of those light breezes to mark the transition. He took the tray and walked in a more conventional manner to the sideboard.

‘Would you be so kind as to slam that down with enough vigour to make a sharp sound?' called Cabal after him. ‘I was intending to do it myself to indicate my state of mind before you turned all Florence Nightingale.'

Horst paused, then put the tray down sharply enough to make the spoon dance in the bowl.

‘Thank you,' said Cabal. ‘Now. How the hell is it that you are not dead? Properly dead? I saw you die, and you were little more than smoke and ashes by the time the sun had finished with you. Believe me, I know dead, and I don't think I have ever seen anyone quite as thoroughly dead as you.'

His voice had risen as the little colour his recuperation had brought to him had drained from his face.

‘It's lovely to see you again, too, Johannes.' Horst walked around the bed to return to his sitting place. ‘I can tell you're delighted.'

‘I shall doubtless be delighted at some near future date. For the moment, however, I am consumed with a desire to know how it is that my brother, who was dead, and then undead, and then dead again, now manages to once more be merely undead.'

Horst shrugged. ‘Perhaps it's a cyclic thing.' It was calculated to irritate, calculated with the finesse that only brothers can attain, and it succeeded like pepper under an eyelid.

‘If I had my strength…!' began Cabal, but Horst interrupted him with, ‘Even if you did, I could still pick you up with one hand and put you back to bed.' He waited until Cabal's wrath subsided to an aggrieved fuming before saying, ‘It's a long story, and it will take one night to tell. Then I will sleep and, if you have any sense, you will sleep, too.'

Even Cabal's short temper was a poor match for his curiosity. ‘What do you mean?' The curiosity deepened into suspicion. ‘Why exactly
are
you here, Horst?'

For once, Horst seemed awkward and unsure how to proceed. Finally, a forced smile appeared on his face, and he slapped his knees and stood to look around the room. ‘It's funny being back in the old house again. After all this time. There's still a gap in the terrace to this day, you know. I'm not sure anyone feels confident enough to build there again in case whatever they build vanishes, too. It took a while to find you. Some detective work. I had to ask around. I've heard some interesting things about you, Johannes. But that all took time.' The smile flickered out. ‘There's not much time left.'

‘You need me for something, that much is evident. It cannot be something minor, as I imagine there are devils in the pit that you would rather deal with than come running to me.'

‘Hardly
running
…'

‘Why me? As extraordinary as I am, it is a big world and there must be alternatives. If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't have died once, never mind twice. You wouldn't have been reborn once, never mind … I must admit, the second resurrection confuses me.'

‘For what it's worth, I don't hold you responsible for the second time.'

‘You're not supposed to come back even once, as a general principle.'

‘Nobody was more surprised than I. At least nobody was until your very gratifying reaction when you finally recovered consciousness.'

‘I was not…!' He thought back and subsided. ‘Actually, yes, I was. There is no other way of characterising it. I was surprised. Very surprised.'

‘You were gobsmacked. Banjaxed. And any number of similar terms that you obviously don't know.' He laughed drily. ‘As for why you—because I know you, and you're good at what you do.'

‘You're assuming a lot.'

‘You'll want to help once you understand the circumstances of my return and what followed it. Besides, as I say, I heard things about you when I was looking for this place.' Horst closed his eyes for a moment, steeling himself. ‘The second time I died … I gave up, Johannes. I'd had enough of you. Enough of everything, really. I belonged dead. You were all set to become a bigger monster than I could stand to see. Perhaps…' He sighed, not looking at Cabal. ‘Perhaps I was a coward. I just couldn't bear to watch. Still, even as dark a cloud as the
Ministerium
had a silver lining.' He raised a finger to hush Cabal. ‘You'll hear all about that presently. The important thing is that they undid my mistake.'

‘Your mistake?'

‘I should have waited. I should have watched. You have done good, Johannes. As a side effect, I know, but there's something in you that wasn't there before. I can only guess that it is your soul.'

There was a silence, marked only by the heavy ticking of the old grandfather clock in the hall below. Then Johannes Cabal said, ‘I see. May I vomit now?'

‘Be my guest.'

‘No, really. I think I drank my soup too quickly.'

*   *   *

As Horst sped to fetch a basin with an alacrity that would make Hermes blink, it would be as well to take a moment before the major part of the tale is set forth. When Cabal was feeling less nauseated, his brother, Horst, recounted to him the tale of his second resurrection, why it occurred, and what happened subsequently. This was all told, naturally, in the first person. Horst, however, did not know every element of the story or the inner worlds of every protagonist. The reader, therefore, is offered the courtesy of Horst's story rendered into the third person, with extra details to which he was not privy. This courtesy comes at no extra charge, but purely from the wholesome glow of the author's good nature.

JLH

 

Chapter 1

IN WHICH THE DEAD ARE RAISED, BLOOD IS DRUNK, AND EAVES ARE DROPPED

The party travelled through the flatlands, guided by an unhelpful map. They were a sombre and sober group, ten men and three women, who wore hiking clothes and impressively stacked backpacks. An astute observer would have noted that their clothes and gear were all new, and that several showed signs of blisters due to their boots not being properly worn in, and that none looked happy in a woollen hat. There were no observers, however, for the flatlands are unutterably tedious and usually lacking in things worth the observing.

Their leader paused and consulted the map again. This took the form of a large square of predominantly blank paper upon which the legend and gridlines had consumed far more ink in the printing than any physical features. There were a few paths—even to call them ‘lanes' would be an aggrandisement—a few ditches with pretensions towards being streams, and one long earthwork that travelled into the centre of the map and then petered out, as so many things in the flatlands tended to. Drystone walls, interest, lives … all fading away.

At least the earthwork had the decency to stick up: a long railway bed for a spur line to nowhere, abandoned decades before. They could see it was heavily overgrown on the steep sides of the artificial ridge, but there were also signs that, relatively recently, much of the heavier undergrowth had been cut back or felled. They clambered up onto its top, past the unhealthy bushes and saplings that grew there, and found themselves on the rail bed itself, still bearing—slightly surprisingly—sleepers and tracks. Even more surprisingly, there was a train there, hidden behind the trees and shrubs.

This discovery certainly surprised the hiking party, and even overawed them. The locomotive, although matte with rust the shade of dried blood, still exuded an air of exultant mechanical malevolence, as if somebody had crammed a black dragon into a giant jelly mould in the form of a steam locomotive and, with the wave of a wand, transformed the creature into the machine. But no; a wand would be insufficient. A magic staff perhaps. Or an enchanted caber. In any event, the iron dragon now slumbered in the sleep of years. Behind it was a train of assorted carriages, flatbeds, and freight cars, all once painted in black with red detailing, the exquisite work now peeling and forlorn. Just readable on the side of one of the cars was the legend
The World Renowned Cabal Bros. Carnival
.

The leader of the group looked at the words for a long moment, and then smirked a very superior smirk of the type that starts at the corner of the mouth and finishes with trouble.