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
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
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
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.
CHAPTER 16
in which a scientist returns to Hell and a deal is broken
“Mad Dan” Clancy carefully considered his next answer. As an outlaw of the Old West, he had never really considered what awaited him after death; he had been far too busy rooting and tooting at the time. Coming off second best in a gunfight, however, he had been flung into the abyss, and confronted with eternity, Limbo, and a fistful of printed foolscap sheets in rapid succession. Of the three, the last terrified him most.
