Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

CHAPTER 15 in which midnight strikes and dawn breaks

Cabal stood at the top of the Helter-Skelter with a pair of opera glasses and directed operations. He was in the way of the late-evening revellers but, characteristically, really couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss. “Hey, daddio,” said a hip young dude, demonstrating that everything old is new again. Cabal slowly lowered the glasses and gave the offending youth a look that would have chilled dry ice. The youth, lacking experience but possessing chutzpah in excess, didn’t notice. “You’re cramping my style, man. Yo dissin’ mah main squeeze.”

His main squeeze simpered, curtseyed, and said, “Good evening, sir.”

“Let me see if I understand your outlandish mélange of argot, young man,” said Cabal, who was fewer than ten years older but who already regarded “young” as a synonym for “stupid.” “You’re suggesting that by standing at the top of my own Helter-Skelter I am in some way imposing upon your” — he looked at the girl, who simpered some more — “young lady.”

“Get hip to the jive, mah man,” said the youth, jiggling on the spot, crossing and recrossing his arms while making horned hands. Cabal wondered about his sanity. “Ah’m a-saying this, fool, you’d — ”

“Hold hard. I think I caught the word ‘fool’ there. Are you calling me a fool?”

“Sure, yo a fool, fool! Yo a — Oh, I say! Yaroo! Get off, you oik!”

For Cabal had grasped him firmly by the scruff of the neck and thrown him head-first down the chute.

“I trust you can make your own way down?” he said to the girl as he put the glasses back to his eyes.

“Oh, rather. Sorry about Rupert. He’s a bit of a nitwit, but frightfully good-looking Well, ta-ta.” She smiled sweetly and swept down the chute and out of sight.

“Ta-ta, lady,” said Mr. Bones, who had just arrived at the top of the stairs. “Mr. Bones reportin’ in, general. There ain’t a sign of the guy. He’s so gone” — Bones paused while a suitable simile came to mind — “that he’s comin back. Kind of.” Cabal looked at him oddly. Bones tried again. “What I’m sayin’ is, we can’t find the man. He’s vanished, boss.”

“The perimeter is secure?”

“Oh, yeah. Ain’t a blue-eyed weasel gonna get out of this place we don’t know about. Can’t figure it, myself.”

A good-natured clattering up the steps presaged the appearance of Bobbins. He seemed upset in a bright way. “Sir! Oh, sir! Look!” He held out a brown paper bag.

Cabal looked into it and then slowly reached in to remove an eraser dripping with goo. He dipped in again to find an old advertisement for ladies’ arch supports, also soaked in the stuff. “Layla?”

“Somebody killed her, sir! Who would do such a thing?”

Cabal thought Bobbins was far too nice to be an expression of Satanic influence. “What about her bodyguard?”

“Dead, too! And one of the chaps from Laidstone is missing.”

Barrow’s work, it had to be. Now that he knew he wasn’t fighting humans, he clearly didn’t feel morally bound to take prisoners. The gloves were really off now. Cabal bit a knuckle and thought hard. It was half past eleven now; he had half an hour left in which to neutralise Barrow and locate one last soul. Time was too pressing to juggle both without Horst’s help — where was Horst, anyway? — so Barrow would just have to be the lucky donor. Cabal concentrated; if he were Barrow, where would he be heading for? He can’t get out of the carnival, he knows and violently disapproves of its function, nowhere is safe, so he’s gone on the offensive. What would he target?

“Scheßle! The contracts! Barrow’s going to destroy the contracts!”

Bones nodded thoughtfully. “That’s bad.”

“We have to get to the train before he does! Come on!” He made a move towards the steps, decided urgency outweighed dignity, and jumped onto the chute.

The train was unguarded and unoccupied behind the main body of the carnival grounds, although still within the fences that ran across the track fore and aft. After the trouble with Billy Butler, Cabal had become quite paranoid about the train’s security. Barrow spent a couple of minutes locating a crowbar from one of the flatcars and made his way to the office. It was locked with a heavy chain and padlock, but the wood beneath the staples gave way first. Barrow was glad of the never-ending din that floated down from the rides and shows: it hid the shrieking as the pins tore out. After looking around to check the coast was still clear, he heaved himself up into the cabin. He pulled the door to behind him and looked around.

In the gloom he could just about make out the desk and a large blanket box, the kind of thing his uncle had always told him contained bodies. He doubted even Cabal kept corpses in his office, though, and turned his attention to the desk. All the drawers were unlocked, and none contained anything of interest. The top drawer on the right-hand side, however, refused to budge. He didn’t have time for subtlety; he’d just have to jemmy it open. At least, he would if he had the faintest idea what he’d done with the crowbar. He had the blasted thing a second ago; where might he have —?

The lights came on suddenly, leaving him blinking and shielding his eyes.

Johannes Cabal, who’d taken a moment to put on his blue glass spectacles before turning the light switch, was not at the same disadvantage. “If I were in a better mood, I might make some small joke about asking if you have a search warrant,” Cabal said. “As I’m not, we shall get straight onto the business of what I am to do with you.”

Barrow blinked the tears from his smarting eyes. Behind Cabal were three huge riggers like the ones from the Ferris wheel and a very thin man. The only other way out of the car was through the windows, and he didn’t think they’d stand still while he did that. Even if they did, it was a long way down to the tracks.

Cabal picked up Barrow’s crowbar from where he belatedly remembered putting it on an overstuffed armchair. “Very subtle,” he commented with light sarcasm. “I would have expected you to have acquired some lock-picking skills from a friendly thief or similar.”

“Most thieves couldn’t pick a lock to save their lives. If they had enough application to learn a skill like that, then they’d have enough to get a job that would certainly pay more than crime. ‘Criminal genius’ is an oxymoron. The vast majority of criminals get in by smashing their way in. That’s why it’s called ‘breaking and entering,’” said Barrow, and hoped Cabal wouldn’t know playing for time when he saw it.

“Really? How disappointing. Another shattered illusion. Still, that’s of little concern at the moment. The thing we should be applying ourselves to is the question of your immediate future.”

“What about it?”

“Whether you have one. Would you like to live, Mr. Barrow?”

“We all have to die sometime.”

Cabal smiled, although there were elements of sneer about it. “So I’m told. Let me rephrase my question. Would you like to live past midnight, Mr. Barrow?”

“Why? What happens at midnight?”

“Well, if I don’t have your signature on a form, I’ll have your brains all over that wall as a consolation.”

Barrow added this to some of the other facts that had come up during the last thirty hours. It all came together beautifully. “You have a time limit, don’t you? Midnight. And you need me to sign because you have a quota to fulfil. Now it all makes some sort of sense,” he said.

The smile slid off Cabal’s face like a wet fish off an umbrella. “How did you know that? Who’s been talking?”

“Nobody told me, per se. I worked it out.” Barrow took a leisurely look at his watch. “Less than fifteen minutes left. Sorry, Mr. Cabal, no time-and-motion awards for you. I won’t sign.”

Cabal took a threatening step forward. “I don’t think you understand the gravity of your situation.”

“I think I understand it entirely. If I sign, you get some sort of great reward and I spend the rest of my days on this Earth awaiting damnation. Not really a life at all, is it? If I don’t sign, you kill me, I go to whatever awaits me, and you take whatever punishment you have coming. I hope it’s something very unpleasant, Mr. Cabal, because I really have no intention of helping you. So you’d better get on with it.”

Cabal hefted the crowbar. “I’ve killed before — ”

“Good for you,” interrupted Barrow. “I hope you enjoy bashing my brains out with that, because, when midnight comes, mine will be the last life you will take. I have to weigh my life against making sure that you lose yours. I think it’s worth it. Go ahead, Cabal. Kill me.”

Cabal looked at him, appalled. “This is ridiculous. You’re behaving as if I’m just some sort of common murderer.”

“There’s nothing common about you.”

“Thank you,” snapped Cabal. “I’m serious. I deal in death in the same way a doctor deals in disease and injury. I don’t want to spread it, I want to defeat it.”

“Necromancer.”

“Yes! Yes, I’m a necromancer, technically a necromancer. But I’m not one of those foolish people who take up residence in cemeteries so that they can raise an army of the dead. Have you ever seen an army of the dead? They’re more expensive than a living one, and far less use. A shambles; they march ten miles and their legs fall off. Napoleon would have approved — that really is an army that marches on its stomach. Until it falls out.

“That’s not what I’m interested in. I want to deny death. I want to … well, for want of a better word, cure it. Is that such a bad thing? Can you look me in the eye and tell me that there was never a moment in your life when, given the power, you wouldn’t have brought somebody back from the dead? Not as some sort of ghoul or monster but just as they were? Warm? Living? Breathing? Laughing?” Barrow realised with a shock that Cabal was pleading with him. “Can you tell me that there was never a moment when you would have given anything to have woken up and for them still to be there?”

Barrow thought of a cold October day fifteen years before and said, “We have to accept it.”

“No!” roared Cabal in a sudden fury that made Barrow step back. “No, we don’t! No, I don’t!” He reached into his jacket and produced a piece of paper, some sort of contract. He shook it at Barrow. “Sign this! Sign it, damn you! I am so close to success, so close.” He calmed himself to a hoarse whisper, which was more threatening by half. “I need your signature, Barrow. You’re standing in the way of science. You don’t want to go down in history as a Luddite, do you?”

“What went wrong with you, Cabal? What twisted you up like this? Can’t you see that what you’re doing is wrong?” He sighed. “No, of course you can’t. I admit I’ve made one mistake about you, Cabal. Up until this moment, I thought you were at the very least a bad, bad man. Perhaps even evil. I was wrong about that.”

“Then you’ll sign?” asked Cabal, not understanding Barrow’s gist, hoping it meant acquiescence.

“You’re not bad, you’re just mad.” Cabal’s look of hope turned hard. “When we spoke today, I had the oddest feeling that we had something in common. I think that, somewhere inside you, there’s a decent man trying to get out. I even think that all this” — his gesture took in the office, the carnival, the contract in Cabal’s hand — “is the result of you just trying to do the right thing the wrong way. If I’m right, then I’m not unsympathetic, but I can’t let this go on. No, I won’t sign your dirty little contract. Do as you will, but you’ll have no co-operation from me.”

“Fine,” said Cabal, and struck him a glancing blow with the crowbar. He watched without emotion as Barrow folded and fell at his feet. He sighed and started to accept what he’d known ever since the sun went down and things had gone from bad to worse. That, at the last, he’d failed.

“What do you want us to do with ’im, guv?” asked Holby, pointing at Barrow.

“I don’t know,” said Cabal. “Does it matter? Just throw him in the furnace or something.”

He went to the door and climbed down, deep in thought. Perhaps he could collar the first person who passed him, check their ticket number, discover that they’d won the end-of-season big, big prize draw, and award them the entire year’s takings. Of course, there was a bit of paperwork they’d have to fill in first. It wasn’t a bad scheme, now that he thought of it: desperate but practical, like so much of the rest of his life.

He’d hardly set foot on the ground when somebody was saying, “Excuse me? I wonder if you could help?”

“Certainly, but first may I check your ticket?” he started as he dusted himself off and turned. “You may already have won the end-of-season, big, big …” The words died in his throat.

“Have you seen my father?” said Leonie Barrow.

“I’m sure I, uh, I think I saw him back at the carnival. Somewhere. He’s round and about.” Cabal gently took her arm and started to steer her away from the train. Dolby’s bellow made them both turn.

“’ere, guvnor.” He pointed at Barrow’s limp form dangling between Holby and Colby. “I fink ’e’s too big to get in the furnace in one piece. Can we chop ’im up a bit first?”

“Oh!” said Leonie Barrow.

“Ah,” said Johannes Cabal.

They sat at Cabal’s desk, Cabal behind it, Barrow — wet from the dousing he’d taken to bring him around, a thin line of blood running from his head wound and mixing with the water — opposite, and Leonie at Cabal’s right. On the desk lay the contract and a pen. Cabal watched but did not interfere as Leonie’s hand found her father’s.

“Are you all right?” she whispered, as if Cabal and Mr. Bones, who stood behind the little group, wouldn’t be able to hear. “What did he do to you?”

“It’s only a scratch,” said Barrow, gesturing at but being careful not to touch the wound. “I was expecting far worse.”

“You’re not out of the woods yet, Mr. Barrow,” said Cabal, hating the way it made him sound like a music-hall villain. He checked his watch. Less than five minutes. He shot a sideways glance at the hourglass on the shelf. The top globe seemed to be empty, but grains still fell and sparkled. It was now or never, all or nothing. “I still have a contract that needs signing, and I’m under some time pressure here, so if we could cut along, I’d be very grateful.”

“What are you doing here?” said Barrow to Leonie, ignoring him entirely.

“Well, what was I supposed to think when you left the ticket in my room? I thought you’d had second thoughts.”

“I burnt that ticket. There was absolutely no way that I wanted you here. I’d do anything if you weren’t.”

“Ah,” said Cabal butting in, “I can help you there. Safe passage home for the pair of you.” He tapped the parchment. “Just sign.”

Barrow looked tiredly at him. “Go to Hell, Cabal.”

“That,” replied Cabal, with a very tight rein on his temper, “is rather what I’m trying to avoid. But if I go, rest assured that you’re going to your just rewards, too.”

“And my daughter? What about her?”

Cabal looked at Leonie. She’d been well named: her mane of hair was as yellow and rich as a lioness’s, and her face, although pinched with tiredness and worry, showed a certain determination and will that he found affecting. The precious, irreplaceable seconds drew out. Two minutes left. Abruptly, Cabal reached down beside his chair, opened the glad-stone bag that lay there, and drew his handgun.

“I’m afraid the time for subtlety has long since gone, Mr. Barrow.” He levelled the revolver at Barrow. “Sign or die.” Leonie gasped. Cabal ignored her.

Barrow actually yawned. “We’ve been though this once already, and my answer hasn’t changed. No.”

“Very well.” Cabal hadn’t expected him to crumble suddenly, but it had been worth the attempt. He swung his arm until the gun was bearing on Leonie. “Sign or she dies.”

“Dad!” said Leonie, and slapped her hand over her mouth. She frowned at uttering the traitorous word. Cabal realised that she didn’t want to upset her father any more than he already was. She was letting him play this game out. Even at this pass, she was still thinking of him. A remarkable woman. Why did he always meet them in such unfortunate circumstances?

“You won’t,” said Barrow.

“What is this? A dare? Ye gods, man, it’s your daughter’s life!”

“I know that. I also know you, Cabal. I saw how you reacted when you first saw her in town. It took me a little while to understand what was going on in that mausoleum you call a mind, but I finally got it, distasteful as it seems.”

“I don’t have time for amateur-psychology demonstrations, Barrow. I’m going to start counting — ”

“It was love at first sight.”

Despite everything, Cabal actually laughed an honest laugh of disbelief. “Love? Love? You are so very, very wrong, Barrow. I’m sure Leonie’s a lovely person. In other circumstances, perhaps we could have been friends, and I really would be loath to blow most of her head off, I’m sure. But” — he deliberately thumbed the hammer back — “I’ll do it without hesitation.”

“You won’t do it,” Barrow said with finality, crossed his arms, and leaned back in his seat. The tableau was held for a long moment: Barrow certain and determined; Cabal looking at Barrow, and his gun hand levelled unwaveringly at Leonie; Leonie trying not to look frightened, watching Cabal’s trigger finger, and noticing it was barely touching the trigger itself.

Suddenly the carnival fell totally silent; the calliope stopped in mid-phrase, the barkers stopped barking. Cabal blinked, raised the gun to a ready position, and checked his watch. “What’s this, Bones?” he demanded. “There’s still a minute left.”

Bones stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat. “That’s right, boss. Still a minute for you to get that there contract signed, but as for this here carnival, we’re packin’ up.”

“What?” Cabal rose to his feet. “How dare you? This is my carnival, and I say — ”

“You say way, way too much with all them big words of yours. And it ain’t your carnival, and it’s never been your carnival. You just borrowed it for a while, and the loan term’s up, boss. This last minute, it’s ours. And it starts” — he struck a dramatic listening pose by the window; the calliope churned back into life, and Cabal recognised the tune within the first few notes as a deranged, discordant version of “The Minute Waltz” — “now!” Bones danced around like a ferret and clapped his hands. “Time for some real fun round here.” He stopped by Cabal. “Hey, did I ever mention what a pig’s-ass job you did of makin’ me in the first place?”

“Frequently.”

“I means to say, look at this.” Bones’s face sloughed off the front of his skull, revealing bare bone and muscle. It hit the floor with a noise like an accident with a rice pudding. Cabal just glared at him. Barrow had attended enough autopsies to have seen worse. Leonie looked away. She had the feeling that the next minute was going to be the worst of her life, one way or another. “That’s just shoddy, now, ain’t it?” He laughed a high shrieking laugh, rolled the door open, and leapt down to the ground.

The open door let in a tide of sound, including a lot of screams and shouts. “What the Hell is going on?” Cabal said, and stepped forward to the doorway.

Hell was exactly what was going on.

The carnival was falling apart and re-forming into new, horrible shapes before his eyes. He was forcibly reminded of Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. It didn’t seem like a place to bring the family. The Things from the Ghost Train were flying low and fast between the blossoming flowers of destruction that used to be sideshows, harassing panicking townsfolk into headlong stampedes. The giant gorilla had left the Ghost Train, ascended the Helter-Skelter — now a looming tower of spikes and blades — and stood triumphantly atop it, swatting at what used to be the four jockeys from the Day at the Races concession but who now looked like personifications of Death, War, Pestilence, and Hunger, although they still wore their bright racing silks. The gorilla was holding in its spare hand some hapless individual that was fighting feebly to get away. At the base of the tower, Denzil waved up at Dennis, who paused in his struggles to wave back. He didn’t feel cut out to play Fay Wray at all.

“Stop that!” bellowed Cabal. Nobody stopped at all. “Joey? Joey! Pull your verdammt trousers up this instant! You’re frightening people!”

“That’s rather the plan, actually, old bean. Sorry and all that,” called back Joey, the most well-mannered and polite expression of diabolical will one is ever likely to meet.

Cabal looked around. “Bones, stop them! I’m still in control here!”

“For the next thirty seconds,” shouted Bones from a hundred yards away. He became sober. “I’ll see what I can do, boss.” He turned to the pulsing boil of chaos that used to be a carnival. “Stop that,” he said in an effete voice, wagging his finger. He exploded laughing, staggering around with delight at his own wit. Then his head just exploded.

Cabal drew back the hammer on his smoking gun. “I will not be mocked,” he said to nobody in particular. He turned back to face Barrow. “Sit down,” he said to Barrow, who had started to rise. Cabal looked around the office. The panelling was starting to rot, the polish vanishing from the desktop, a smell of damp and abandonment returning to this place, just as he’d found it. He walked back to the Barrows and placed the gun barrel against the side of Leonie’s head. “Fifteen seconds. Sign now.”

“No,” said Barrow, inevitably.

“Then it’s all over,” Cabal said tonelessly, and aimed at Frank Barrow’s head.

Without drama but in swift, certain movements, Leonie snatched the contract and pen from where they lay and signed. She thrust the paper at Cabal. “Leave my father alone,” she said simply.

“No!” cried both men, making Leonie jump.

Cabal glared at Barrow. “Now look what you’ve done with your idiotic intransigence!”

Barrow wasn’t so aghast at Leonie’s act that he couldn’t be taken aback still further. “What I’ve done?”

Distantly, the clock of Saint Olave’s struck twelve.

The flow of dust in the hourglass abruptly ran out, settled in the lower bulb, and lay still.

“Time’s up!” said Bones’s body, appearing at the door carrying a boater full of skull fragments. The voice came directly from the wet stump of his neck and sounded a little muffled. “All aboard the Damnation Express!” He swung out of sight again, and through the open door Cabal could see that the carnival field was empty but for a few people running aimlessly about.

Cabal turned to Barrow and his daughter to speak, but then paused. Barrow was crying freely, Leonie holding him and telling him it was all right. Cabal looked at the contract in his hand and opened his mouth, but suddenly the train heaved forward and he was thrown onto his back. Leonie looked around fearfully. It was odd; the train seemed to be pulling away, but they — she and her father — seemed to be staying still. The walls of the car were becoming translucent, as if they belonged somewhere else or were made of mist. Even Cabal, rolling heels over head in slowed motion, didn’t seem very solid anymore.

The train slid away from beneath the Barrows, and they were dumped gently onto the tracks. Except there were no tracks, no sleepers, and no sign that there had been for years. The train, a phantom monster in glowing greens and blues, howled past the station and left it a ruin from an old, old fire, the stationmaster saluting sadly as he was whisked back out of the land of the living and dumped into the place reserved for and deserved by suicides. At least, that was the thinking when the rules were drawn up.

Screaming and ranting, the engine shot away into the night and towards a black horizon. Leonie even had the impression, just before it vanished from sight, that it had lifted from the ground altogether and was travelling into the midnight sky like a great luminous eel from the ocean depths.

“Why did you do it?” asked her father, deep in misery.

“He was going to kill you, Dad. I had to take a risk.” She looked at the empty sky. “A calculated risk.”

Cabal felt a faint tickling on his lip. He moved his hand to swat it away but had trouble co-ordinating his hand. He tried once, twice, and was just at the point where he decided that it wasn’t that unpleasant a sensation, and it was too much bother to deal with it anyway, when somebody else swatted it away for him. Actually, somebody else slapped him hard.

“Uuurgh!” said Johannes Cabal, rolling away from the blow. He climbed onto all fours, his head hurting abominably, feeling disorientated and nauseous.

Horst watched without comment as his brother vomited miserably on the office floor. When he was sure Cabal was just about empty, he reached down, grasped him by the lapels, and threw him across the room. Before he had time to recover, Horst had picked him up again and pinned him against the wall.

“You didn’t listen to a word I said, did you?”

Cabal tried to pull himself together. Beside his brother’s coldly furious face, he could make out that they were still in the office. It must have carried on rotting while he’d been unconscious — mild concussion, that would explain why he felt so dreadful — for it was now no more than the car full of rubbish it had been when he first found it. The only change was a poster on the wall, decaying and curling already: “The Cabal Bros. Present Their World Famous Carnival of Wonders!” A woodlouse unsuccessfully tried to negotiate it and fell to the floor — Cabal realised what the tickling on his lip had been. Through the windows he could see gnarled trees and a suspicion of low, rolling land. They were back in the Flatlands. The carnival was back in mothballs.

“You took another innocent soul, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t take anything — ”

“Don’t lie to me! I was right there in that bloody box, listening to you!”

“Then you know that I didn’t take anything!” barked Cabal, wrestling himself free. He glared at Horst as he tried to straighten his jacket. “She gave it to me.”

“Gave it to you,” said Horst contemptuously.

“Gave it to me! Don’t come the moral guardian with me! If you were right there, why didn’t you do something?”

“I was ready, believe me. If I’d heard that distinct click your finger makes when squeezing a trigger, it wouldn’t have got as far as making the second click it makes when it’s finished.”

“You didn’t stop me shooting Bones.”

“You were leaning out of the door and obviously pointing in the wrong direction.” He smiled grimly. “You shot Bones, did you? Can’t say I’m sorry. I never trusted him. I never trusted any of them. They finally betrayed you, then?”

“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.

Johannes Cabal sat alone with his self-pity and self-loathing for a long minute. Finally, he looked up with an expression of awful realisation. “Dawn?” he said in a horrible whisper. He threw himself to his feet, staggered slightly as the circulation returned to his legs, recovered, and ran to the open door.

Outside, Horst had walked some fifty feet and was taking off his jacket, neatly folding it and putting it on the ground. Cabal paused on the step and shouted desperately, “For pity’s sake, Horst! Come in! Come in! Don’t do this!”

Across the Flatlands, light from the new dawn swept rapidly towards them. Horst watched it approach with unconcerned equanimity and a gentle smile. Cabal didn’t. He jumped down, landing heavily, and started to run towards his brother, pulling his own coat off as he ran, swinging it around to act as a shield against the brightness. “Please, Horst! I’m begging you, don’t! You can get back to cover if you run!”

Horst looked at the brightening horizon and felt his skin starting to heat with an odd prickling that was neither pleasant nor unbearable. He could hear his brother, and the naked fear in his voice touched him unexpectedly. He couldn’t look at him; he had to stay resolved. He’d lived, one way or another, longer than some, and that was something to be thankful for. Now it was undoubtedly time to go. His eyes didn’t waver from the distance.

“Sorry, Johannes. I’m going wherever I should have gone nine years ago.”

His last and strongest impulse for self-preservation came and went, and now it was too late. Even he couldn’t reach shade in time. He wondered if this was all his fault somehow, whether the sun was going to hurt, hoped that he’d done the right things, knew that these were his last thoughts and that they meant nothing. “Goodbye, brother,” he said, and then he thought nothing at all, as then the sun caught them both, momentarily blinding Cabal as it spilt over some distant mountain range. He blinked and cursed and tried to find Horst with his outstretched hands, but there was nobody there anymore. He whirled and clutched, but he knew it was already far too late. When finally he could see, there was nothing to see. Just some brown leaves fluttering, and a grey dust flying, and the faint scent of lost chances. Cabal spun around, looking to the far horizons, but he was alone, just as he was always alone.

The new day found Johannes Cabal the necromancer sitting by a ruined and rotting train on a long-abandoned spur line, his head in his hands, the gravel between his feet splashed wet with drops of saline, his sunglasses tossed carelessly to one side when he couldn’t see anymore.