Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

CHAPTER 8 in which Cabal is educated in business affairs and undertakings are undertook

The good people of Murslaugh responded well to their saviour and showed their appreciation by visiting his carnival in droves. In his school exercise book with the squared paper pages that he thought his brother, Horst, knew nothing about (he was wrong, and Horst found it vastly amusing), Johannes Cabal kept a graph. On the x-axis was a one-year time scale; on the vertical y-axis a scale marked from 0 at the origin to 100 at his topmost point. This was Cabal’s “soul chart,” and it was looking quite healthy. With the edge of his wooden ruler, he could estimate the best-fit line, and it took him over the hundred-souls mark about two weeks before the deadline. It was a safety margin, but not much of one; it wouldn’t take much to make him lose the wager. Not much at all. There was a knock at the door. It was Mr. Bones.

“Say, boss, it’s the boss,” he said.

Cabal put his exercise book away and leaned back in his chair. “You are making precisely no sense,” he said.

“You know? The town boss guy.”

Cabal sat up abruptly. “You mean the mayor? Well, show him in.” Cabal had little time for politicians at any level in the normal run of his scientific career. Well, perhaps the level marked “live experimental subjects,” but that was all. If he had learned anything in the previous weeks, however, it was that local politicians have limited powers but enormous egos. A snub, real or illusory, was all it took to make them apply those limited powers with great vigour and imagination.

Two months previously, a disgruntled alderman had almost managed to close them down for health and safety infractions. Cabal hadn’t felt like pointing out that the carnival’s governing body — Hell — only has the sort of health and safety regulations that make sure both are seriously threatened. He had accurately doubted it would have done their case any good. It had taken the carrot of a large brown envelope stuffed with used bank notes, and the stick of a midnight visit from Phobos the Nightmare Man (who was pathetically grateful to have been seconded from Tartarus: “It’s good to get out, meet the punters. Gets you back in touch, you know?”) to clear things up. All because the alderman in question took exception to Cabal mentioning in passing that the last time he’d seen any body as bloated as that of the alderman’s wife, it had maggots crawling out of it. The fact that the observation was true was neither here nor there.

The Mayor of Murslaugh was a jolly, ebullient man of the sort who, in a well-ordered world, would be called Fezziwig. That his name was Brown was a powerful indictment on the sorry state of things.

“Lord Mayor,” Cabal said, “what a delight to meet you. I’m sorry I haven’t had time to call on you.”

“Not at all, not at all, a business entrepreneur like you, busy all hours, not at all.” He smiled, apparently expecting an answer.

Cabal gave up trying to find a verb in that sentence. “Well, how can I help you? I am, of course, at the service of you and your delightful town.”

“Ah, well, yes, marvellous, you see? Maleficarus! Poom! Yes, blink! Of an eye! Marvellous!” Inexplicably, he mimed swiping at a ball with a cricket bat, then watching the ball vanish into the distance. “Exemplary!”

“Oh! I understand. This is about me clearing up that little bit of unpleasantness with Rufus Maleficarus? Really, it was nothing. A pleasure,” he added truthfully.

“Nothing? No! Jings, quite substantially not inconsiderable. Taking all points. All points, mind! Great thing, great thing.” He shook his head at the sheer drama of it all. “Local hero.” He looked dolefully at the floor for a moment, drew a great breath, the huge smile reappearing, said, “Busy man! Off now!” and left.

Cabal looked at the door for several moments after the mayor had shut it behind him. “Yes,” he said finally. “Well, if I ever suffer brain damage, I know there’s always a career waiting for me in local politics.”

The ugly man and the fat, ugly man eyed the stall. “What are y’ s’posed to do?” asked the fat, ugly man.

“All you have to do is throw a Ping-Pong ball into one of the goldfish bowls,” said Bobbins brightly.

“An’ I win a prize?” said the fat, ugly man.

“And you win a prize,” said Bobbins. Brightly. Bobbins had been the result of some of Cabal’s tinkering with the basic “a rag, a bone, a hank of hair (and a quantity of lard)” formula — in this case, by the addition of a tin of Brasso metal polish. As a result, everything that Bobbins did, he did brightly.

“Okay,” said the fat, ugly man, faintly echoed by the plain ugly man. “S’pose I’ll ’ave a go.”

Coins and Ping-Pong balls exchanged hands. The fat, ugly man lobbed a ball in the general direction of the goldfish bowls without taking any time to aim at all. The ball hit one bowl’s rim, bounced high, and landed neatly in another.

“Well done, sir!” said Bobbins, brightly. “You win!”

The fat, ugly man and his companion looked unaccountably put out. “Bugger me, Anders,” he said to the ugly man. “I’ve only gorn an’ won, ’aven’t I?”

Anders looked miserable. “Bugger me, Croal. So you ’ave. Now what?”

“You win a goldfish!” butted in Bobbins, brightly.

Croal ignored him. “Just carry on as usual, s’pose. Okay?” he said to Anders.

“Okay,” said Anders. Then, in a theatrical shout, “Blimey! What a con! This ’ere stall’s a diddle!”

“Yeah!” joined Croal. “It’s a diddle! Cheat! Cheat!”

“But… you won?” said Bobbins, slightly less brightly.

As if by magic, a group of perhaps eight large men with pickaxe handles appeared out of the gathering crowd. “It’s a set-up!” they chorused. “It’s a con job! Smash it up!”

“Oh dear,” said Bobbins, his brightness almost undetectable as the men started to destroy his stall.

Cabal was at the steam calliope, loading up an unlabelled piece of music, when news of the disturbance reached him. En route, he stopped by the Tunnel of Love. There he found Horst flattering an attractive young woman to the sticking point.

“Horst! There’s trouble. I’d appreciate your presence.”

Horst looked like he might argue, but a goldfish bowl arching over the top of the tunnel and landing with a hollow plop in the water distracted him.

“Yes, it might be as well,” he admitted. Then, to the young lady, “I’m sorry, my dear, but I am required elsewhere. Stay right here. I’ll be back soon.” As he stepped away, Cabal noticed that her line of sight continued through the space where Horst had been standing a moment ago.

“You can’t go leaving mesmerised women littering up the place,” he snapped. “It’s, I don’t know, unhygienic.”

“It’s a funfair. People are used to seeing odd things,” replied Horst. “Besides, I’m famished. It’s been days. She’s the most edible thing I’ve seen tonight, and I’m not having her running away. Now, come on.” He disappeared into the darkness between the rides.

Cabal looked around, saw Mr. Bones, and clicked his fingers to gain his attention. “Bones! Do something about that woman!”

Bones looked enquiringly at the still form. “Like what, boss?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Put a blanket over her or something,” he snapped, and followed his brother at a trot.

By the time they got there, it had turned into a free-for-all. The destruction of the stall had sparked fights that had spread to other stalls. Horst picked up a man who was trying to set fire to a coconut shy by the scruff of the neck, told him he was bad, and threw him into the next field, which happened to be on the other side of the river. The man’s despairing scream diminishing into the night sky did a lot to calm matters. Cabal went around and did some further calming with his stick. After a few minutes of applied physical diplomacy, the fight had turned into a lot of people, mainly men, standing around battered, bruised, and sullen. Cabal looked at them with palpable loathing.

“Who started this?” he said, and everybody there past school age had sudden, unpleasant flashbacks to when they weren’t. No answers came. He paced up and down in front of them, his hands clasped behind his back. “All I want is the truth. Nobody will be punished,” he said, fooling nobody.

“They’ve gone,” said a faint voice from the wreckage of a stall. Faint, pained, but still eager to please. In a word, bright.

“Help him out of there, someone,” said Cabal, and immediately several men with scuffed knuckles and nosebleeds went to it, eager to show that they were good people who wouldn’t get involved in a common brawl — oh, no.

Bobbins was brought before Cabal like a spoil of victory and dumped at his feet. “What do you mean, they’ve gone?”

Bobbins painfully picked himself up and looked around. “There were two blokes. One was sort of ugly, and the other was sort of fat and ugly. They had a go on the bowls and won. That’s when they went bananas and started saying that they’d been cheated.”

“But they’d won?”

“Yes. I was trying to give them their prize when all these other blokes just popped up and smashed everything. I tried to stop them,” he implored brightly. “There were just too many.”

Horst was kicking around the wreckage. He knelt and picked out a dangerous-looking piece of wood. He showed it to Cabal. “It’s a pickaxe handle. Not the sort of thing people tend to carry around for self-defence.”

Cabal took it from him and hefted it. “You’re saying this was premeditated? Why? And by whom?”

“One of them was called Croal!” interrupted Bobbins, his brightness rekindling by the second. “That’s what the other one called him. He was called Andy. Or Anders. Or something.”

“But who are they? And why did they do it? And what are you grinning about?”

Horst was looking unpalatably smug. “You don’t know much about carny and travelling-fair folk, do you?”

“You know I …” Cabal noticed that the chastised brawlers were still standing around, showing a polite interest in the conversation. “Go on! Clear off! The show’s over!” Slowly they dispersed. Cabal turned back to Horst. “You know I don’t. So go on, have your moment of glory, and astound me with esoterica.”

“There’s nothing mysterious about it. What’s the primary function of a carnival? Not this carnival, obviously. I mean normal ones.”

“To let people have … fun,” replied Cabal as if he’d soiled his mouth with the word.

“Oddly enough, no. That’s how it fulfils its primary function. Try again.”

Cabal hated being patronised and was starting to seethe. “To make money. I’m not a fool. But we’re not interested in the money. I fail to see …” The truth of the matter slapped him in the face like a dead cod. “I am a fool. It’s so obvious.”

“Business competitors. They don’t know we’re not in it for the money. That’s between you, me, and the big ‘S.’” With some satisfaction, he watched Cabal shake his head in disgusted disbelief.

“I suppose this means we’ll have to kill them,” said Cabal finally.

“Think of the fuss. No, they’re businessmen. We’ll do a deal. Believe me, they’ll listen to reason.”

It didn’t take very much detective work to discover that there was a travelling fair in the next town: Butler’s Travelling Amusements. Cabal gave them a visit the next mid-morning to sort things out, taking along a thick wad of currency for if they wanted to be reasonable, and Joey Granite — “His Head’s Made of Stone!” — if they didn’t.

The fair site was quiet when they arrived. Over the entrance, a large, badly painted sign shouted, Billy Butler’s Travelling Amusements! The Best Rides! The Best Sideshows!

“It looks quite, quite appalling,” said Joey.

“Quite so,” replied Cabal. “Incidentally, Mr. Granite, I’d appreciate it if you could let me do the talking.”

“By all means, kemosabe.”

“I mean all the talking.”

“Certainly. You are, after all, the boss. Might one, however, enquire why?”

“To be quite frank, I’ve brought you along as muscle. People have some sort of psychological problem with believing a man can be quite mind-bogglingly strong and intelligent. It has to be one thing or the other.”

“Like pretty women and brains. I take your point. You don’t wish me to undermine my threatening aspect by being unexpectedly rather acute. Very well, mum’s the word.”

Having, he hoped, capped Joey’s notorious loquacity for the time being, Cabal led the way to the largest and least tasteful caravan. He rapped on the door and waited.

Eventually, it opened to reveal a short, dishevelled man in his underwear wearing an ostentatious red smoking jacket over the top. Remarkably, and despite every sign that he had just got out of bed, his synthetically black hair lay perfectly, as if varnished in place.

“Wot d’ya want?” he croaked, blinking in the daylight.

“You are the proprietor? William Butler?”

The man screwed up his eyes and considered Cabal. Then he considered Joey. Then he went back to considering Cabal, because it didn’t put such a crick in his neck. “Oo wants t’know?”

“My name is Johannes Cabal. I see you recognise it.” The man’s scrunched-up face had dilated a little. “I’ve come to return some of your property.” He nodded to Joey, who produced the pickaxe handle from within his coat and waggled it at the man between forefinger and thumb, like a blunt toothpick.

“Y’can’t prove a thing,” said the man. “I never seen that before in my life. I swear on me muvver’s grave, I din’t.”

Cabal was shaking his head. “Slow down, Mr. Butler. The transparent denials come later. Firstly, you are, are you not, Mr. William Butler of Butler’s Travelling Amusements, yes?” The man straightened himself up a little, and Cabal had a warning flash that this wasn’t going to go quite the way he’d planned.

“Only me muvver ever called me ‘William.’ Billy Butler, tha’s me. Showman and entra-pren-ooor. An’ you can’t come rahnd ’ere ’cuesing decen’, law-’bidin’ folk like me ov smashin’ up your carny wivout evidence, see?”

“You misunderstand me, Mr. Butler. I see no reason to accuse you of anything when we both know you’re as guilty as the day is long. No, please, spare me the melodramatics.” Butler’s red face was speeding towards a beetroot intensity. “If need be, Mr. Granite here would cheerfully tear your operation to pieces until he found Mr. Croal and his provocative friend. I’m sure they would only be too eager to admit their rôle in last night’s violence and your part as the instigator, faced with this evidence.” He tapped the pickaxe.

“Or I’ll make them eat it. Hurr-hurr-hurr!” grated Joey, showing an unexpected and unwelcome bent towards amateur dramatics. Cabal shot him a glance and he shut up.

“I’d like t’see ya try,” said Butler unwisely.

A little over seven minutes passed before Cabal pointed to Butler and said, “Is this the man who sent you to cause trouble at my carnival?” Croal and Anders could only nod in agreement. Talking was proving difficult with half a shattered pickaxe handle shoved in their respective mouths. The two men dangled from Joey’s great hands and wished they were somewhere else.

“Bloody grasses,” growled Butler.

“None of this is necessary, Mr. Butler. I just want us to come to an understanding. You and your people stay away from my carnival, and I, for my part, will not have every man jack of you murdered and your souls sent express to the lowest pit in Hell.”

“Ya couldn’t if ya tried,” muttered Butler unwisely.

Cabal barely prevented Joey from smashing Croal and Anders together to make something with too many limbs and not enough heads.

“Look, do you take some sort of pleasure in being contrary? Try to understand. This is out of your hands. You do as you’re told or things will go so badly wrong for you as to beggar belief. Stay away from my carnival.” Cabal turned to Joey. “Put those down and come with me.” Joey dropped Croal and Anders in a heap and followed Cabal back towards the road.

When they were out of earshot of Butler and his gang of glowering riggers, Cabal said, “‘Or I’ll make them eat it. Hurrr-hurrr-hurrr!’”

“I was merely extemporising on the part you’d given me,” replied Joey, unapologetically. “Strong and silent is so passé.”

“And ‘strong and stupid’ is at the thespian cutting edge? Oh, never mind. It sort of worked, if not the way I’d intended. And we saved ourselves this large sum of money.” He slapped the pocket containing the unused bribe. “Although, frankly, we’ve got more of the stuff than we know what to do with.”

Worst was not happy when the morning’s events were recounted to him. “You don’t understand these people. You haven’t put him in his place, you’ve just made him look stupid in front of his people. We haven’t heard the last of Billy Butler.”

Cabal was roused from his bunk just as dawn’s rosy fingers were smudging the clouds like the finger-painting of a hyperactive child. He saw the gaudy colours of light through the sleeping car’s window and groped for his dark glasses. The colours were too gaudy for comfort. “What…” He found his glasses and pulled them on. “What’s happening?”

“It’s bad, bossman,” said Bones. “Fire.”

Cabal dragged on his long coat and ran out into chaos. Everybody and everything was running around in a frenzy of indecision. Even the Things from the Ghost Train were out and about, running up to people and shrieking in their faces. “You! Things!” he roared. “Get back under cover before the sun comes up.” They dithered. “Immediately!” They went. Horst appeared at his elbow.

“Sorry, Johannes. I’m going to have to go, too. This couldn’t have happened at a worse time.”

Cabal spun on his heel to glare at his brother. “Meaning what? That I’m incapable of dealing with this on my own?”

Horst, despite almost perfect poise, was taken aback. “No, not at all. I thought…” He looked towards the horizon. The sun could only be seconds away. “Look, I don’t have time to argue this. I’ve got to go.” There was a disturbance in the air and Cabal was alone.

The sun came up to find a scene of raging natural processes being fought to a standstill by unhesitating rationality and bullish common sense. The riggers and barkers had been formed into bucket lines, and finally a use had been found for Horatio the Human Hosepipe.

“Yo! Baby!” he crooned as he was wielded by Layla. “C’mon, light my fire!”

“Don’t get him excited or we’ll never put the bloody thing out,” barked Cabal, sooty and furious.

After an hour, there was nothing left of the fire. Nor of three sideshows, four concessions, and an “I Lie Diplomatically About Your Weight” machine. Cabal walked around and around the wreckage, hissing angrily if anybody tried to talk to him, around and around like a vulture over a zombie clambake. A Neanderthal sat naked in a large puddle of water, beside which was a charred sign reading The Ice Man! Entombed in the Siberian Ice for Ten Million Years! “What’s happenin’, man?” he asked anybody who came near him.

Abruptly Cabal stopped, sniffed the air, and turned over a piece of board with the toe of his ruined handmade shoes. Exposed was a small pool of liquid that rolled and glistered in a way that spoke of ultrahydrous viscosity. He knelt by it, ruining his trousers into the bargain, and inhaled the air above it. Bones came over and sniffed cautiously at it, too. Cabal stood up, his face an ugly pallor beneath the fire-fighter’s smudges. “Accelerant,” he said quietly.

“Yeah?” Bones tried another sniff. “Smells like gasoline to me.”

“Arson.”

“Well, make your mind up.”

Billy Butler realised he had a visitor by the knock at his door. Actually, it was more the way the door was knocked down, torn out, and lobbed into the next county that was the clue.

“You again,” he said, lip curled, as Cabal walked in. Outside, there was a swatting sound as Joey dissuaded any of Butler’s riggers from coming to his assistance.

“I thought,” said Cabal, slowly and carefully, “that we had a deal, Butler.”

“I don’t rememer makin’ no — ”

“I thought,” continued Cabal, “that we had an understanding. You stay away from my carnival and I let you live.”

“I’ve been in this business man an’ boy for comin’ on — ”

“Yes, that’s the point, Mr. Butler. Mr. ‘I’ve been in this business man and boy since the dawn of time’ Butler. Past tense. You see? It is all over now, and all because you couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

Butler tried another tack. “This ’ere’s private property. If yew don’t — ”

“Ach! I don’t believe it! I’m talking about your imminent death and you’re talking about civil action for trespass.”

Butler paused. Something seemed to be getting through. “Wot? You’re goin’ ta kill me?”

“Yes. Probably.” Never discuss murder plans with the victim, he reminded himself. It takes all the spontaneity out of it.

“Why?”

“Why? You tried to burn down my carnival!”

Butler crossed his arms and smiled smugly. “Prove it.”

“Butler, try to under — You don’t mind if I sit down, do you? Try to understand, I’m not the police. I don’t need evidence, real or fabricated. All I need is reasonable suspicion, and you, Butler, are very suspicious. If, at this very moment, they were testing a suspiciometer in the Antipodes, they would be saying, ‘Good heavens, what is this very suspicious object that we have detected? Why, it looks just like Billy Butler, the world-renowned arsonist and bad liar.’”

Butler considered Cabal’s words and found them reasonable. “Orl right,” he said. “What’s this deal, then?”

“History. You had your chance and you let it go by.” He gazed out of the flyspecked caravan window. “Look, I don’t really want to have your blood on my hands. It would be terribly inconvenient. Why don’t we try one more time, eh?”

Twenty-four hours later, Cabal and Joey Granite were back. Thin wisps of smoke could still be seen to rise from Cabal’s cuffs and collar, and there was soot on his face. He seemed unhappy about something.

The previous day’s fire had been galling quite apart from the physical damage it had caused. When Cabal had woken from a troubled sleep to find that person or persons unknown had not only poured petrol along the length of the track beneath the train, including the office in which he slept, but also padlocked his door shut, it seemed to be verging upon an insult. He had just been considering which window to break when there had been a splintering, wrenching sound and Horst had opened the door.

“Did you know that somebody’d locked this door?” he had asked with an air of concerned enquiry.

Cabal pushed past him and jumped down onto the gravel by the track. “You two!” he shouted at the cab. “Move the train! Quickly, damn you!”

Dennis and Denzil had looked at each other. They’d half suspected something was amiss when the train had been engulfed with flames but hadn’t wanted to cause a fuss by drawing attention to it. Denzil had been about to tell Dennis to get a head of steam up when he’d noticed Dennis’s hair was on fire. That had been good for a laugh, or at least the grisly hooting noises that Denzil used instead these days, ever since his lungs had dried out. Dennis had frowned, scratched his head, and set fire to his hand. Denzil had hooted some more.

They’d still have been there if the great engine hadn’t decided that enough was enough, and started to move with a monstrous roar of outraged engineering. Cabal and Horst had watched in surprise as the locomotive backed slowly down the track. Where it passed, the fire was sucked back in under the locomotive’s belly and vanished in the glimmer of upward motion. Within a minute, there had been no flames left at all except inside the engine’s firebox, a firebox that had been damped down and cold but ten minutes before. Now it raged like a furnace. The brothers Cabal had looked at each other: there were still a good few things they didn’t know or understand about this carnival of theirs.

That was then Now Johannes Cabal and Joey Granite stood before Billy Butler and said nothing. The smell of smoke said it all for them.

Butler smiled nastily. “Oh. It’s — ” As famous last words go, they lacked a certain something.

“Uppercut, Joey,” said Cabal. Joey Granite delivered an uppercut of surpassing science and pugilistic artistry. It was a thing of beauty and kinetic poetry that might be long admired among people who enjoy watching other people beat the living daylights out of one another. It was also powerful enough to lift a small building off its foundations. Anything up to a branch library would have tottered and fallen. Billy Butler, despite a bit of a gut, simply wasn’t in the same league weight-wise. By some miracle, his head stayed on his body, but there was little doubt that the police would be making enquiries long before he hit the ground again. “Let us leave, Joey,” said Cabal as Butler vanished through the cloud base.

They walked quickly back through the Butler fairground, Butler’s men shouting abuse but staying comfortably out of danger, the women running around in predictable hysteria. They pointedly ignored the catcalls and screaming and were soon back on the road to Murslaugh.

Half a mile on, Cabal stopped.

Something was bothering him. It was the idea of predictable hysteria. Hysteria verging on the rehearsed.

Thinking back, he could have sworn several of the women were screaming “Rhubarb! Rhubarb!” And the abuse the men had shouted — there’d been a lot of fist shaking going on, but what had they actually said? Something like “Raffeln-huffeln-ranty-raa!” was it? “Grrulveln gnash raffer”?

“You’re cogitating, old bean,” said Joey, mildly curious. “What’s amiss?”

“I’m going back,” said Cabal determinedly.

“Oh? Why?”

“There’s something wrong here. Something fishy about that fair.”

“You mean apart from their proprietor being in low Earth orbit?”

“Yes, apart from that. I have a sixth sense that tells me when I’m being made a fool of.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of that. ‘Clinical paranoia,’ I think it’s called.”

“I have a sixth sense,” said Cabal as he gave Joey the look of a man who knows where to lay hands on a pneumatic drill and isn’t afraid to use it, “and it’s telling me somebody somewhere is trying to play me for a fool.” He turned on his heel and marched back towards the Butler fairground.

It wasn’t there. There was barely a sign it ever had been. “I knew it!” Cabal strode across the abandoned site. “I knew it!”

“Well, fancy,” said Joey, his great hands on his hips as he looked around with open-faced astonishment. “That’s quite a trick.”

Cabal stopped and looked at Joey. The ogreish man was very convincing in his surprise, but when all was said and all was done, he was still a product of Hell, created from the very blood of Satan. How far could he be trusted? Even Bones, his major-domo, sprang from the same wellhead. Perhaps Horst was the only one he could really trust. Blood was thicker than water, after all. He had its relative density written down somewhere to prove it.

Joey’s hand descended gently on his shoulder and drew him to one side. Half a second later, Billy Butler hit the ground where he’d been standing and made a crater four feet deep. “Thank you, Joey,” said Cabal.

They looked into the hole at the mangled corpse. “At least we won’t have to bury him,” commented Joey. “I’ll just kick some earth in there on him, shall I?”

“No,” said Cabal dryly.

“Not deep enough? I’ll find a spade.”

“Not deep enough. Not by a very long way.” He crossed his arms and looked down on the body with cold disdain. “How deep is Hell, anyway?”

There was a long pause. Then Butler’s head creaked round a hundred and eighty degrees. “How did you guess?” he croaked through his twisted and broken windpipe.

“A little too theatrical to be convincing. That is you, isn’t it, Ragtag?”

“Ratuth,” said the corpse peevishly. The head twisted around again, popping and snapping as it went. Then it extended awkwardly, the vertebrae tearing a slot at the back of the jacket collar.

Joey took a surprised step back. “Oh! I say …”

The tear was soon joined by more and more as the thing that had once been Billy Butler erupted into a mess of hands, claws, and writhing thorned tentacles. Non-Euclidean angles sprang up vertically like the scaffolding for the Tower of Babel. At their head, a horse’s skull topped with a stylised Greek helmet was squeezed out from the gaps between realities. “General Slabuth to you, Johannes Cabal,” finished the demon, jaw clattering.

“Whose brilliant idea was this?” asked Cabal.

“I beg your pardon?”

“This half-witted attempt to make me lose the wager. Whose idea was it?”

“‘ Half-witted’ is a little harsh, I think.”

“Whose,” repeated Cabal, firmly enunciating, “idea?”

“Ah, sort of a committee thing, actually. You see — ”

“Yours, then.”

They looked at each other in silence for a moment. “Yes,” said Ratuth Slabuth finally.

“And what does your master think of this?”

“What? Cheating? He thinks it’s a frightfully good wheeze as a rule.”

“Well, tell him it won’t do. No more interference or the whole deal’s off.”

“Ah, you can’t back out as easily as all that.”

“Why not? We didn’t sign anything. We didn’t even shake hands.”

Slabuth managed to purse his lips despite not having any. “It’s not in the spirit of the thing.”

Cabal laughed derisively. “No more interference, understand? Come along, Mr. Granite.” He turned on his heel and walked off in the direction of the Cabal Carnival.

Joey paused long enough to say, “Nice to meet you. Sorry, must rush,” and rushed.

Ratuth Slabuth watched them go. Then he ignored the earth beneath his feet and plunged into the fiery pit of Hell.

He found Satan on his throne in the cavern of lava, reading a large-print edition of Wheatley’s The Satanist.

“It’s a rum way to warn people off from worshipping me,” Satan commented, indicating the book. “It seems to be lots of fun, according to this. Still, I bet they all die horribly at the end. Oh well. Who wants to live forever?”

“Most of them,” said General Slabuth.

Satan slammed the book shut and it vanished. “So — how was it? Being human?”

“Cramped. I’d really rather it were later than sooner before I do that again.”

“And Cabal?”

“Surprisingly slow to catch on. Still, I managed to wreck about a fifth of his carnival before the penny dropped.”

“A fifth? Well done.”

“He’ll recover, unfortunately. Especially with the help of that brother of his.”

“Yes. Horst Cabal’s involvement was unexpected. Not to worry, it’s done what I wanted. We shan’t interfere further. At least, not for the time being.”

There was a pause, during which Slabuth hovered awkwardly. Finally, he said, “Lord Satan. May I ask a question?”

“Yes?”

“This whole business has troubled me from the start. While I can see the potential gains to be made by letting Cabal run around doing his best to gather souls, I still don’t understand why you gave him the carnival to help him. From our past experiences, we know them to be powerful corruptors within fairly broad parameters. Giving one to Cabal is tantamount to conceding the wager from the beginning.”

“And your question is?”

“Might I ask what all this was in aid of?”

Satan smiled sweetly. “No. You may not. Tactics are your concern, Ratuth Slabuth. The grand strategy is mine. You may go.”

Slabuth started to say something, but thought better of it. Trying hard to avoid feeling menial, he went.

Satan waited until he was alone. He glanced around briefly. If it were possible for the embodiment of sin to look guilty rather than pleased about it, he could definitely have been described as slightly ashamed. Satisfied that there was nobody about to observe his actions, Satan clicked his fingers. A dog-eared old school exercise book, the sort with squared paper, materialised in his hand. He opened it to a graph entitled, in his neat hand, “Cabal’s Performance.” The zigzagging line crossed the hundred-souls mark about a fortnight before the deadline. Satan weighed up the setbacks Cabal had suffered over the last few days, smiled, and erased the latter part of the line. Carefully, he put in a revised estimate: now it indicated a hundred souls with barely a day to spare.

“There, Johannes,” said Satan. “That should put a little more excitement into your life.”