Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

CHAPTER 5 in which Cabal plays with dolls and horst broadens his vocabulary

Fairs and carnivals are not, by nature, profound experiences. They are there to amuse and distract, to draw the citizens from their grey workaday lives into something that has a flavour of the extraordinary. The lights dazzle, the sideshows amaze, the rides excite, the stalls frustrate, but all pleasantly. It is a jolly pickpocket and a charismatic confidence trickster. The rubes … the suckers … the customers know full well that their wallets and purses are slowly deflating every second that they walk upon the fairground, but the customers … the suckers … the rubes would have it no other way. They do not mind being taken for a ride, as long as the ride is fun. This is the nature of fairs and carnivals.

The Cabal Bros. Carnival was something special, though. Something unusual. Something different. Whereas a normal carnival is a shallow, ephemeral experience intended to take average persons out of the mundane world and fool them — for as long as they are prepared to be fooled — into believing that fun really does travel the highways and byways as a bolus of giggles and glee, the Cabal Carnival wore that belief as a mask. It was, however, merely a facsimile of a façade. Behind the wide, welcoming smile was a mantrap baited with desires and delight, pleasures and popcorn, hedonism and hot dogs of dubious content. Satan, who was after all something of an authority in matters of temptation, was quite right when he had said that the carnival lowered the defences of those who walked through its gate. Everybody comes to the fair to have a good time in the full expectation of being ripped off at some point. All that was different here was the scale of the loss.

But all this is theory. Examples are more salutary.

“He’re here to have fun.” It was said in a tone that indicated that the alternative was a split lip.

Rachel hoped it wouldn’t come to that; the last one had only just healed. “I am having fun,” she said, and smiled. It wasn’t a very convincing smile, but it showed sufficient compliance for Ted to uncurl the fist that had unconsciously formed at his side. His hands spent a lot of their time balled.

He looked around. Before them spread the carnival, a whirling chaos of sound and light and smells that promised so much. Calliope, neon, and the scent of fresh popcorn created a new world: a place of wonders and excitement and fun. Yes, its true function was to tempt to contentiousness, to blasphemy, argumentation, and murder, but you could also win coconuts.

Ted regarded it all with the sour expression of a man who expects disappointment, and usually deals with it by putting the source in the hospital. He held out his hand towards Rachel, and she took it quickly, allowing herself to be drawn through the gates and onto the fairground proper. As they walked through, they passed the farmer on whose land the carnival was set up.

He stood, thumbs hooked into his waistcoat pockets, looking very pleased with himself, smiling and nodding at everybody who paused at the gate to buy tickets as if he owned the carnival, too. In truth, he was keeping a headcount, partially to make sure that he wasn’t cheated out of his rent, but mainly for the sheer pleasure of running the steadily increasing number through some simple mental arithmetic and revelling in the hefty sum that popped out starboard of the equals sign. He would doubtless have been less happy if he had known what was waiting for him in the shrouded future, at a time shortly after he left his deathbed. If he’d been under the impression that the Ministry of Agriculture was addicted to unnecessary paperwork, first contact with Arthur Trubshaw would set things in perspective.

In the wide paths that led between attractions, Ted and Rachel walked. Had a curious bystander watched them for a few minutes, he would have observed that it was not immediately obvious why the couple had come at all.

Rachel seemed to be walking through a partial version of a carnival. Most of the time she seemed guarded and anxious, and though occasionally she would suddenly react pleasurably to something that caught her eye, it would quickly fade from her face, driven out by a shadow of conditioned ambiguity. She had long since learned not to have opinions, and if she couldn’t help but have one, she was careful not to express it around Ted. After all, he might disagree. The ambiguity extended to her appearance, a gallant but hopeless attempt to be pretty for Ted, and nondescript for all other men. She simply ended up being a smudge of a woman, in nice but dull clothes, in nice but dull colours. She wore too much make-up — eye-shadow and concealer — that concealed her natural prettiness, and something else, too.

Ted was also a figure of uncertain purpose. He was at a funfair, but he was not having fun. He had a girlfriend, but she was not his friend. He did not walk with her, but instead herded her like a grudging sheepdog, alert for any possible threat to his ownership. He was caught in the conflict between showing her off and the real possibility that some man might actually look. If the curious bystander had continued to watch for a moment too long, he would certainly have found himself with Ted, wide-eyed and mouth-breathing, Sunday-clothed and poorly hair-cut, standing toe-to-toe and demanding to know what the curious bystander found so fascinating about his girlfriend.

They washed between stalls, he fraught with suspicion, she with shifting apprehensions, unaware that they were objects of attention for a curious bystander.

Horst Cabal, invisible to all but the most perspicacious of cats or suspicious of dogs, watched them go by. Rendering himself imperceptible by men and animals was one of the little tricks that came with being less alive than most, along with his speed, strength, and — when need be — mesmerism. His perceptive eye and sympathetic heart, however, were all his own. He watched and he listened to their stilted conversation — his all statements, hers all prevarication — and he drew his conclusions.

He waited until they were out of sight before allowing himself to seep back into visibility, and stood quietly, an expression of speculative contemplation on his face. Then he blurred and the place was empty again.

Johannes Cabal was just finishing his first session as a sideshow barker when Horst found him. Horst sprang into being in full sight of several customers, who all performed simultaneous shocked jumps and squeals.

“My brother,” Cabal explained to them. He smiled with all the warmth of a dollhouse oven. “Rather a gifted magician.” He waited for the subdued and not entirely convinced crowd to dissipate before turning angrily to Horst. “What are you trying to do? It doesn’t take much to scare these sheep off.”

Horst passed him a bottle he had picked up in his rapid trip from there to here. Remarkably, its contents had survived the transit. “Drink this,” he said, unmoved by Cabal’s anger. “You need to save your voice for your next session.”

Cabal took the bottle testily and swigged from it. There was a moment’s pause, just long enough for Cabal’s expression to change from testy to horrified revulsion. He spat the liquid violently onto the grass like a man who has got absent-minded with the concentrated nitric acid and a mouth pipette. He glared at Horst as he took off his spectacles and wiped his suddenly weeping eyes. “Disinfectant? You give me disinfectant to drink?”

Horst’s surprise was replaced with mild amusement. “It’s root beer, Johannes. Have you never had root beer?”

Cabal looked suspiciously at him, then at the bottle. “People drink this?”

“Yes.”

“For non-medicinal reasons?”

“That’s right.”

Cabal shook his head in open disbelief. “They must be insane.” He carefully put the bottle down, but continued to watch it from the corner of his eye, as if fearing it might force itself upon him. “So — what have you been doing?”

“Watching.”

He said no more, waited for the silence to have its effect and for his brother to start almost visibly fuming, and then continued. “I think you may be in luck tonight.”

Cabal’s face showed a sudden light of hope that troubled Horst, but it was quickly replaced by suspicion. “I thought you didn’t approve.”

“I don’t. I didn’t say I was going to do anything to move things on. Just that you may be in luck tonight.”

Cabal considered. “And …”

Abruptly, he was alone. He let his breath out in a deep sigh. It hardly seemed worth becoming irritated, especially as he knew that was exactly why Horst had left in such a fashion. Johannes Cabal regarded the bottle of root beer and decided he would rather be somewhere else, too. If there was a chance that the carnival would claim its first real victim tonight, he was anxious to see it happen. If necessary, he would make it happen, and, given the agency by which he had come into temporary management of the carnival, this seemed a likely necessity. First, however, he would need somebody to take over the barking for the House of Medical Monstrosity.

“You.” He snapped his fingers and pointed peremptorily.

A passing ten-year-old boy with a Dr. Terwilliker beanie cap, a red-and-white-striped T-shirt, and a paper bag full of freshly roasted peanuts gawped at Cabal. Uncertain, he tapped his chest. “Me, sir?”

“Yes, you. Here. Come here. Up here, behind this podium. No, perhaps not — nobody will see you there. To the side. Take that ridiculous hat off. Now put this ridiculous hat on. There. Now publicise this sideshow until I get back.”

Cabal left the boy panic-stricken in an overlarge straw boater. “How do I do that?” the boy called after him, but he received no answer.

In truth, however, Cabal was equally unsure of his next actions. Despite a careful search, the carnival had failed to produce anything as basic as a user’s manual.

Cabal wandered among the chattering common folk — who were both very chatty and very common — and sought inspiration. It shouldn’t be difficult, he reasoned. The whole carnival was an excrescence of Hell, an outpost, a departure lounge for the pre-damned. The whole place should hunger for the souls of the unwary. Therefore, he theorised, it should only require a light prodding to do what came naturally. He paused, a dark rock in a flow of humanity. He wasn’t quite sure as to how one should set about lightly prodding a carnival. Perhaps he was, abominable as the thought was, over-intellectualising the problem. Perhaps he should trust his instinct. This would be difficult, he knew — his first instinct was always to use rational thought — but perhaps, just this once, he should listen to his intuition.

He tried to clear his mind, tried to silence the thousand buzzing thoughts that made up his consciousness, tried to ignore the sound of the crowd. He concentrated and focussed until there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

Certainly nothing helpful. He made an exasperated noise and let his mind, resentful of even those few moments of inactivity, whirr back up to speed.

Prickly at the failed experiment, Johannes Cabal looked straight ahead and saw the carnival’s penny arcade. He’d expressed surprise when Horst had insisted on it being added to the complement of attractions, but — as always — his brother had known what people liked. While it was unlikely that it would ever play much of a role in gathering souls, it did seem to be doing an excellent job in gathering spare change from those who could afford it and redistributing it to those who were running short. The idea was that the sideshows were where the real chances lay; in the dark corners and shadowed booths, these were where the deals of dubious theological probity would be debated and decided. In contrast, the penny arcade was largely intended as a wealth-redistribution centre, it being notoriously difficult to lead folk into temptation if they can’t get past the ticket barrier. Mr. Bones had explained all this to Cabal while the arcade was being built by two of Horst’s more fanciful constructs, Messrs Lintel and Scree. They loped around like stilt walkers on overly long, overly thin legs, their equally long thin arms waving around. They wore black suits and dark glasses and had hair of an uncomfortable shade of yellow, and the thickness of darning wool. As he watched them totter back and forth barking at each other in an incomprehensible language of their own, Cabal had been confident that they were intended as gross parodies of himself, but refused to rise to the insult by saying as much. Still, they certainly knew their business, throwing together wood and metal, glass, paint, and varnish in a whirl of apparent chaos that spat out penny cascades, mechanical horse races, and bagatelles of precision engineering and pristine form. Cabal liked things to be precise and pristine, and so had warmed to Lintel and Scree, although, again, he wouldn’t say as much. This kind feeling came to him now as he looked at the penny arcade, the result of their labours. He would try his luck here.

The arcade was busy. At the one-armed bandits, a man was consistently losing while his less well-off neighbour was on a lucky streak, both unaware of the arcade’s Marxist tendencies. Elsewhere, tin monkeys shinned up tin palm trees, ghosts appeared at the windows of a haunted house only to be met by a fusillade of shots on a shooting gallery,[1] and a mechanical Gypsy told fortunes from the security of a glass-fronted case.

The Gypsy was — according to the legend painted across a board at the top of the case in swirling orange, yellow, and black — one Madame Destiny, and she took the form of a young woman with a headscarf, loop earrings, and a vertiginous cleavage. She sat, hands raised motionless about her crystal ball, silently waiting for the gang of teenaged boys gathered in front of her case to stop trying to peer down her top, making ribald and obvious comments as they did so. Finally, one of them, spurred on by the others, fumbled a coin into the slot. Madame Destiny immediately whirred into life and obligingly looked into her crystal ball. Deep within it, strange colours flickered and swirled. The boys grew quieter, and an air of discomfort developed around them as they watched the mechanical Gypsy’s hands move in a very realistic manner for wood or plaster, her fingers bending where no hinges were evident.

Abruptly she juddered to a halt, the light died within the crystal ball, and the boys recovered their bravado a little. Then, with a percussive twang of spring-loaded machinery that sang through the machine’s case for long seconds, a piece of card dropped into a tray set into the base beneath the glass. Grinning at the comments of his friends, the boy took the card and read it.

It seemed to take a long time to read those few lines, but after the first words his eyes widened a little, and the smile slowly faded from his face as if massaged away by invisible fingers. He went back and began to read the words again, then onwards to the end. Then, ashen-faced, he turned and staggered out of the arcade, his suddenly concerned friends asking him what was wrong.

Cabal watched them go grimly. He walked over to Madame Destiny, made a show of finding a coin in his pocket, and leaned down to put it in the slot. As his face grew close to Destiny’s on the other side of the glass, he whispered, “Very amusing for you, no doubt, but hardly in line with what we’re trying to do here. The intention is to tempt them in, not scare them off like rabbits.” Unseen by any but Cabal, Madame Destiny raised a finely painted eyebrow. With another reverberant twang, a new card dropped into the tray, despite no coin being inserted. He read it where it lay.

Despite the insubordinate tone, there was good news here, and Cabal was cheered a little by the knowledge that Madame Destiny seemed to know of at least one alternative prospect. “Richer pickings … Where precisely?”

Madame Destiny’s eyes rolled in their sockets until she was looking directly at him. She held his gaze for a second, then looked back down into the crystal. The strange light bloomed within, and with a whirr of gears she gently fluttered her fingers across the surface of the ball, never once touching it. A click, a twang, and a new card fell into the tray, covering the one already there. Cabal took them both, dropped the older in his pocket, and examined the new one. It read:

Cabal turned. He was now facing the arcade’s entrance. Beyond it was a surging torrent of humanity, washing from here to there and back again. No single face stood out, no one figure drew his attention. Cabal scowled. “This is no use,” he said in an undertone that he knew Destiny could still hear. “I need some better indication of whom I am looking for than …” His eyes darted down to reread the card, and he stopped. For now the card read:

Experimentally, he tried turning the card through ninety degrees. Madame Destiny’s advice underwent a metamorphopsychotic[2] transition and now read, “TO YOUR LEFT.”

Cabal nodded slightly, impressed. Considering she was essentially half a mannequin, a small cabinet, and just enough cogs and gears to make a tolerably accurate mantel clock, she certainly had her uses. Cradling the fortune like a cardboard lodestone, Cabal set off in search of his prey.

He walked headlong into the crowd and, inured by nature and habit against the complaints of those upon whose feet he trod and whose peanuts he spilt, he proceeded to close upon his mark. First, he used a rough triangulation to give him a very approximate range and bearing. Then he put his head down and ploughed a path through the mass, leaving a wake of disgruntlement. AHEAD OF YOU, said the card. AHEAD OF YOU.

Abruptly Cabal’s headlong pursuit foundered upon an immoveable rock, all wrapped in a Sunday suit. He looked up, and a brow beneath a bad haircut beetled down upon him. Cabal quickly checked the card again. MADAME DESTINY’S ADVICE now read, THAT’S HIM. APOLOGISE. QUICK.

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.

But this is no longer faith; this is desperation. It is no accident that the same women who say, “You have to love a bastard,” with a twinkle in their eye, are the same women who — later, when it transpires that the bastards that they loved and let into their lives are, indeed, utter bastards — then complain, “All men are bastards.” Given the skewed sample of their survey, it’s hardly a surprising or reliable conclusion.

Weighing against this uncritical appreciation of any small kindness he might show her — such as not hitting her, not spitting on her, or not groping her best friend while in her sight — was the distinct sense that there was something not right about the doll itself. It had seemed fine while it was on the shelf at the shooting gallery, even though, now that she thought back, she couldn’t remember why it had seemed so appealing that she had asked for it. Now, however, the only thing that was preventing her from foisting it onto some passing child or even dumping it in a bin was the sure knowledge of Ted’s wrath. The doll felt wrong in her hand, actually felt “undoll-like” in an ill-defined, equivocal manner whose very vagueness was upsetting in itself.

Suddenly Rachel made a tight, frightened little cry and dropped the doll. It fell on its bottom and sat there on the trammelled grass of the carnival field as neatly as if it had been posed. Ted whirled — he had been three steps ahead, of course — and glared at her, then at the doll. “What’s the matter with you?” he demanded, snatching the doll up.

“It…” She paused, realising how stupid it would seem if she said what she thought. “There’s something sharp in it,” she said instead. “It stuck into me.” She looked at her finger. A small crescent of red dots was coalescing into a single drop of blood. She sucked her finger and looked warily at the doll dangling in Ted’s hand. She was sure it hadn’t been smiling like that before. Smiling, yes, but not like that. Not showing its teeth.

Ted scowled at Rachel as if it was just typical of her to be injured by a toy. He looked at the doll. It was of a shapely young woman, with black hair in spit curls, wearing a short red dress. He guessed it was a cartoon or comic-strip character, but he didn’t recognise her. Something sharp in it, was there? It would be because it was just some cheap tawdry tat, made in a sweatshop somewhere, he was certain. He squeezed the doll, almost wishing that the sharp bit of metal that was surely in it somewhere would prod out and stab him, maybe even draw blood. He hoped so. That would give him the excuse to go back to the shooting gallery and hit the stallholder.

He squeezed, but nothing stuck into his hand. Quite the opposite; the doll seemed soft and pliant in his fist, satisfyingly so. He squeezed it again, firmly, not violently. The doll, lolling in his grip, winked lazily at him. He gazed at it, and it seemed to gaze back, the moment drawing out like wire. Rachel watched him, nervous at first that he would suddenly be hurt and blame her, then more nervous still when he wasn’t. He just stood there, staring at the doll.

The doll felt warm in his hand. He could feel the curves of its body, of her body, beneath the red dress. She felt good. Like a woman should feel. Soft and warm and curved.

Rachel quailed as he looked up and shot her a hostile glance that was somehow different from the hostile glances she had grown accustomed to. He looked down again, studying the doll. She could see his thick, powerful fingers slowly working around it, and she felt both an unexpected jealousy and an unfamiliar flavour of fear.

Ted wished he had come to the carnival by himself. Now he had to put up with Rachel following him around like a sheet of misery. He never had any fun. If he had a girl like the doll, things would be different. She looked good, she dressed good, she felt good. He could almost imagine finding a woman like that, here, at the carnival. He would chat her up, make small talk, ask her what her name was.

I’m Trixie.

Trixie, he thought, that’s a pretty name.

Thank you. What’s your name, hun?

“Ted,” said Ted.

“What?” asked Rachel.

He shot her another dirty look, turned on his heel, and walked on. Rachel waited for a moment, unsure if she had done anything wrong or not. Then she followed.

Ted strode onwards, the crowd opening and closing around him, flowing. He barely knew where he was going. He barely cared.

She doesn’t love you.

He had always known that. Of course, he had always known that. He couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to love anyone. Loyalty, that was one thing, but love …

She doesn’t even like you.

It hadn’t really occurred to him that Rachel might have opinions. He paused in the shadow of the Helter-Skelter, the delighted screams of children rolling over him as they swept around and down the slide. He had a half-formed impression of the screams carrying on beneath ground level, and seeming much less delighted. The night air was cool, but he was sweating, feverish. In his hand, something writhed.

I like you, Ted.

He was looking at the bright light bulbs running down the side of the Helter-Skelter, the light flowing in primary torrents. He could barely hear himself think over the music and the chatter and the laughter and the screaming. He certainly didn’t hear himself say, “I like you, too, Trixie.”

With time, maybe I could even love you.

Loyalty, that was one thing, but love …

“Ted? Are you all right?” He whirled drunkenly. Some woman with too much make-up was looking at him. “You look terrible! You look ill, Ted!” He didn’t look terrible. She looked terrible. Her head was too small. She wasn’t wearing a red dress. “You’ve got to get home, you’re coming down with something!”

He said something that was supposed to be “Get away from me,” but the syllables just fell out of his mouth like rotting potatoes. Frustrated and too dizzy to find his anger, he turned his back on the woman and stormed away. The crowd, full of faces with wide eyes and wide smiles, looked through him, but parted like loud ghosts.

The woman was right about one thing, thought Ted: he had to get home. He had to get home with Trixie. He clutched the doll to his chest and half walked, half ran to find the exit.

Beyond the archway, the air would be cool. He would be able to think again. He would be happy. He would be loved. Trixie felt good against his chest, as good as a real woman, better than a real woman. That woman (Did he know her? Rachel? That sounded familiar) was a real woman, but there was so much wrong with her. She would never be right. She had life and wants, and now it turned out she even had opinions. He remembered how Trixie had felt when he had first squeezed her, when he had been expecting some wire to stab him. Now he imagined squeezing Rachel, squeezing any “real woman” like that, imagined all the sharp wires of their lives and history, of their desires and thoughts, unwanted, unnecessary, stabbing into his hands as he squeezed, the blood coming from his wounds, staining their dresses red. All that pain, and all that frustration; he would never be happy.

He could feel Trixie against him, held tight. Love and happiness. He passed under the archway.

And it all went away.

He stopped dead in his tracks, a grown man clutching a doll. He took her in both hands and looked at her, shock and a terrible longing growing in him for something he hadn’t even known he had wanted until a few minutes ago. He squeezed her, he squeezed it, but it was just a doll. He shook it, but that only made her winking eye clatter spastically open and shut tikatikatika.

He turned and looked up at the archway. Walking through it had been like flicking a switch. Inside/outside: Trixie/doll. He made to re-enter, but the turnstile wouldn’t move. He shoved ineffectually against the steel arms, until he noticed the man in the booth smiling darkly and tapping a sign that read No Re-Admittance on Cancelled Tickets.

Ted thrust his hand into his trouser pocket and threw all his change onto the small metal counter. He didn’t know how much he’d given, nor did he care. Neither did the man in the booth. Without even checking how much was there, he worked the machine, and a ticket, as red as ripe pomegranate seeds, clacked from the slot in the counter. Ted took it like a drowning man clutching at a straw and threw himself against the turnstile again. The man in the shadowed booth let him beat against it for a full five seconds until, still smiling darkly, he released it, and Ted staggered back into the carnival ground.

Instantly, Trixie was Trixie. He stood clutching her, ecstatic yet terrified by the knowledge that, when the carnival moved on, so would his happiness. Perhaps he could hide here, somewhere behind the scenes, make the few days last, hide in a dark corner, holding Trixie. He ran blindly in an agony of fear at the uncertain future, for longer than he knew.

When he paused, he found himself away from the carnival proper, down near the railway, near the train. There was a man standing there. Ted recognised the man who had blundered into him, the man who had given him the free games at the shooting gallery. Like a dream, the man seemed to be expecting him; and, like a dream, this seemed perfectly rational and proper to Ted.

Ted walked forward, taking his hat off and crushing it in his free hand. The other held Trixie, tender and close, in its crook. “Mister,” he stumbled out, “sir …”

“The Cabal Brothers Carnival thanks you for your interest,” said the man, speaking with a faint German accent, “but we have no vacancies at this time.”

“But…” Ted realised that the man had known even before he had that he had wanted a job there. It was perfect. If he insisted, perhaps? If he begged …

“No … vacancies at this time.” The blond man pushed his straw boater up at the front. It was an odd choice of headwear, considering he was otherwise dressed much like an undertaker. He nodded at Trixie. “You like the doll?”

Ted hugged her protectively. The man shook his head with restrained incredulity. “Agalmatophilia. Wonders will never cease. I owe my brother an apology.”

The man reached into his inside pocket and produced a folded piece of paper. As he flicked the paper open with an easy snap of his wrist, he took a pen from the same pocket. “I believe we can come to an arrangement.”

Ted didn’t listen to what the man had to say. He just felt Trixie squirming against him, heard her voice in his mind, and he reached for the pen.

Later, Horst found Cabal in his office aboard the train, examining the signed form with every expression of satisfaction. “I never expected it to be this easy,” he said, holding up the paper so Horst could see Ted’s untidy signature.

Horst sat down on the other side of the desk and leaned back into the leather chair. “Neither did I,” he replied a little grimly. “Perhaps Satan didn’t, either. We should be careful.”

“Given my profession, being careful is what separates the successes from the failures.”

“Ha! What makes you think you’re such a success, Johannes?”

“Because I’m not tied to a post, up to my knees in bonfire.” He frowned; Horst was spoiling his little victory. Cabal decided to make some effort to jolly him along. “You were right, though. I couldn’t see what possible use a toy filled with the diabolical spirit could be in bringing us an adult male, but it did. He virtually begged to sign this. There are, however, a few things that I don’t understand about this evening’s business.”

Horst looked wearily over the desk at him. “Do you need to understand everything?”

“Of course,” said Cabal, dismissing such a silly comment. “Firstly, what precisely happened there? Did the doll come to life, or did it somehow create a paraphilia in” — he looked at the signature — “Edward … somebody. Terrible handwriting.”

“A para-what? Paraphilia? Where do you get these words? What’s a paraphilia?”

“A fetish. What exactly did Satan’s blood do to the doll? Possess it or curse it? I’m interested to know.”

“I have no idea. A little of both, maybe. Perhaps. Does it matter?”

“It may, at some point. Something else I would like a definite answer to, though.” He waited until Horst looked at him before continuing. “I would like you to answer the question I posed you earlier.”

Horst sagged back into the chair, and looked at the ceiling. “I don’t remember it,” he said, though he obviously did.

“I asked,” said Cabal with cryogenic patience, “why you had decided to help me, after making it quite plain that you would not directly help me get these” — he waved the contract — “signed. Then, at very nearly the first opportunity, you do. I would very much like a clear and honest answer, without you wafting out of here like a manifesto promise the day after an election. Well?”

Horst looked like he wouldn’t speak at all for several seconds. Then he drew breath and said, “Well. He was going to Hell anyway, so why not get it on an official basis right now and save him the embarrassment of being snubbed by Saint Peter. Can you imagine, all those nuns and things in the queue behind you, and Saint Peter telling you you’re not on the list and you can’t come in?”

“I’m not sure it works like that — although, having seen one postmortem bureaucracy, perhaps it does. I do know, however, that you’re being evasive. There must have been any number of likely candidates for damnation in here tonight, yet you settled upon that one person like … well, like yourself on any moderately attractive girl at a party.”

Horst raised his eyebrows. “Good God, you’re not still bitter about that time at Conrad’s party, are you? I’ve apologised for that a dozen times over. It was a joke.”

“It was a calculated humiliation, but I won’t let you distract me. Why him?”

Horst settled back into his chair. “His girlfriend.”

“What? That mousy woman? Not your usual type at all. Far too much make-up, too.”

“That make-up,” said Horst slowly, “was to hide her black eye.”

Cabal sat up. “Black eye? You mean … that man? Edward … whatever his name is?”

“I could smell the violence on him, even through his cheap aftershave. I know his sort. One day, he would do something a great deal worse. I decided he needed to be stopped.”

“You decided, did you, Horst?” Cabal glared at his brother.

“I decided. I really do know his sort, Johannes. I’ve seen it time and again. His girlfriend was nothing more than a toy he plays with now and then. And he’s the kind who breaks his toys. Well, I decided he deserved a toy that would play with him for a change.” He paused, his gaze distant. “Maybe it will break him,” he added coldly.

There was a silence. Finally, Cabal said, “Being dead has made you rather less liberal than I remember.”

Horst shrugged. “My motto always used to be ‘Live and let live.’ Under the circumstances, I need a new one.”

Cabal looked at the contract. “Now you’ve told me your motives for helping me get this signed, it’s taken the shine off it somewhat. We’re supposed to be doing the devil’s work and you’ve gone and contaminated it all with the whiff of virtue. I really don’t think you’ve quite got the hang of being an agent of evil.”

“Early days yet, Johannes.” Horst stood up and stretched. “Practice makes perfect.”