Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

The question (Form UNCH/14/K, Section 45, No. 215) was headed with a warning: “This Form Will Be Invalidated by Any Metachronism Whatsoever.” Clancy didn’t have the faintest idea in — or just outside — Hell what a metachronism might be, and that frightened him. He’d had seventy-six earlier stabs at filling in UNCH/14/K rejected, but was never told why. Trubshaw, hated Trubshaw, loathed Trubshaw, had said, “We ain’t got the hands to mark every one up with all the mistakes. This ain’t a schoolhouse, boy! If’n you want to get through this here door, you’d better just get a mite more careful, y’hear?” Then he would cackle and slam the little window in the door shut. Clancy made an almost physical effort to shut Trubshaw out of his mind and concentrated on the question. Halfway through answering it, he distractedly put an extra stroke on an “F” — “All responses must be made in BLOCK CAPITALS except where otherwise noted” — and turned “FOUR FEATHER FALLS” into “FOUR FEATHER EALLS.” He stopped and stared at the mistake, trying to erase the errant stroke with sheer willpower. No good. He tried artfully re-forming letters to make it look a little closer to the correct answer but just ended up with “BALLS.” It was hopeless. There was nothing for it but to queue for three months again to get a requisition form to get a new copy of this form.

A shadow fell across him, and before he had a chance to turn, something fell onto the parched ground between his crossed legs. He reached down, and what he found amazed and astonished him. It was the holy of holies, the thing he’d wished for almost as long as he’d been in that godforsaken place. An eraser.

“It’s a little greasy, but that should rub off,” said the shadow. It had a faint German accent. “Enjoy.”

* * *

Johannes Cabal approached the Gates of Hell for the second time in his life. Nothing much had changed here except the introduction of a melamine notice over the porter’s door reading Queue Here. Cabal headed straight for it.

At the door, the procession of transient pre-damnees was in temporary hiatus thanks to a pitched argument that had broken out between Hawley Harvey Crippen and Kunigunde Mackamotzki, aka Belle Elmore, aka Cora Crippen.

“Why am I here?” she wailed theatrically. “He’s the one who murdered me! And cut me up!”

“Cora, please listen,” said Crippen for what was clearly not the first time. “I didn’t murder you. It was manslaughter. An accident.”

“You accidentally cut me up and buried me under the cellar floor? In quicklime? That’s some accident, you little worm!”

“Damage limitation, ma’am,” said a U.S. soldier in the line behind them, better known for his skill with a document shredder than with a rifle.

“But I’m the victim!” she screamed. “What am I doing here? Why am I here? Why, why, why?”

Arthur Trubshaw looked up from the Rolodex he was consulting. “Adultery. Multiple counts,” he said in a bored voice. He flicked onto the next card. And the one after that. “Lots and lots and lots of counts.”

Everybody looked at Cora Crippen. She wilted slightly under the attention. “Well,” she said quietly, “I was lonely.”

“Fascinating,” said a new voice. The sight of the fully clothed Cabal parted the head of the queue from the door like a razor shaving a hair. “Hello, Trubshaw. I’m back. Kindly open the door.”

Trubshaw squinted at him for a moment. Then a horrid grin settled upon his face. “Oh, so it’s you again, is it, Mr. ‘Let me in, I ain’t got no appointment’ Cabal? Well, sure, you can come in.” He cackled again, ducked out of sight, and then reappeared with a hefty form that he thrust out of the little window at Cabal. “Soon as ye’ve done the paperwork!”

Cabal didn’t bother taking the wad of sheets but just cocked his head to read the top leaf. “‘Form VSKW/I, Special Circumstances Living Person Admittance Docket Application.’” Cabal straightened up and looked at Trubshaw. “You’re not serious, are you?”

“Damn right I’m serious! I wrote this ’n up jus’ for you. Gotta admit, it’s kinda tricky. You might find yerself havin’ to do it a few times afore ye get it right! Say two, three hundred? Heh-heh-heh-heh-he-urrrk!”

It is received wisdom that you can’t put a square peg in a round socket. As is common with received wisdom, this isn’t entirely true. It is quite possible to put a square peg in a round socket if you are very stupid, are very wilful, or just don’t like the square peg very much.

Cabal reached through the window with both hands, grabbed Trubshaw by the ears, and pulled. Shrieking woefully, Trubshaw was dragged through the window until there was enough head showing for Cabal to put him in a neck lock and bring his weight to bear. Trubshaw was not a large man, but his shoulders still wouldn’t fit through the window frame at all, until one broke with a crack that made the onlookers wince. Cabal dragged him all the way through and dumped him on the baking ground.

“You sonovabitch!” Trubshaw sobbed. “You goddamn sonovabitch! You jus’ wait ’ntil I tells His Worshipfulness what ye’ve been a-doin’ an — ”

Cabal wasn’t about to listen. He dragged Trubshaw to his feet and snapped fiercely in his face, “I really, really don’t care. As for you, you’ve got other things to concern yourself with. Arthur Trubshaw …” He whirled Trubshaw to face out onto the plains of Limbo. As far as the eye could see, there were people. People with forms and pencils that they were throwing to the ground as they rose to their feet, a great expanding wave of outraged humanity face-to-face with its tormentor. “Meet your public,” finished Cabal, planting his foot in the small of Trubshaw’s back and shoving him into the great sea of people, which closed over him in a second.

Cabal had little time for lynch mobs as a rule, but at least if one had ever caught up with him, unconsciousness or death would have made the experience a brief one. No such mercies were available to Trubshaw. As Cabal reached through the little window in the Gates of Hell and undid the porter’s door bolt, he smiled. If he was going to have a lousy day, he didn’t see why a few other deserving cases couldn’t share the fun.

* * *

When General Ratuth Slabuth, general of the Infernal Hordes, received word of an invasion of Hell and some sort of riot on the plains of Limbo, he checked his pocket diary against what had happened a year ago, tutted, and said that he’d deal with it. He caught up with Cabal on the Fourth Circle.

“Hello, Cabal,” he said, manifesting as discreetly as possible. “Back again, I see.”

“You worked that out all by yourself? I can see why you became a general, Slabuth.”

“Sarcasm ill behoves you,” replied Slabuth archly as he made a mental note to look up “behove” later.

Cabal gave him a look that made him wish he’d looked it up beforehand. “I’m not interested in your ideas for my personal development. I’m here to see Satan, as you well know. Now, step aside” — he looked at Slabuth’s distinct lack of legs — “or do whatever it is that you do to get aside. I have an appointment.”

“Very well. But first, purely as a matter of interest, did you get all the souls? All one hundred?”

“Hardly your business.”

“So you didn’t.”

Cabal looked at him evenly, then reached into his ubiquitous glad-stone bag and produced the box of contracts. “Every contract in here is signed,” he said, carefully sticking to the truth, the partial truth, and some stuff as well as the truth before replacing the box.

“Oh,” said Slabuth, the crest of his Grecian helmet falling, “I was sure you were going to fail. Rats.”

“Your concern is noted. That Billy Butler stunt was a nuisance, I admit.”

“All’s fair in love and war, though. No hard feelings, eh?” said Slabuth banteringly, and obviously not caring one way or the other what Cabal’s feelings were on the matter.

“I wasn’t aware that we were at war, and I’m sure there’s no love lost. Still, that’s very decent of you.”

“Is it?” said Slabuth, dismayed.

“Oh, yes. No hard feelings.” They looked at each other for a long moment. Finally, Cabal said, “I’ll be on my way.”

General Ratuth Slabuth watched Johannes Cabal disappear around the corner of the tunnel and stroked his bone chin with one claw thoughtfully. He hadn’t got to where he was today without being able at least to detect