He halted abruptly and the smile fell off his face like a badger off a billiard cue. One of the birds was behaving in a very distinctive way: circling around and around something out of sight behind a bend in the path. A black bird that was no blackbird, a great ugly shambles of a creature that went “Kronk!” The day suddenly lost a lot of its appeal.
Cabal rounded the corner to find that the crow was circling over a boulder lying on the hillside near the path. On it sat Denzil and Dennis playing an extemporised version of Rock, Scissors, Paper of Denzil’s invention: “Rock, scissors, paper, dynamite, punch Dennis in the face.” Judging from the state of Dennis’s nose, they’d been playing a while.
Dennis saw Cabal first and turned his ghastly mess of a face towards him. He tried to smile, and the varnish around his mouth cracked and crazed. Denzil took the opportunity to make a cunning winning move in their game and punched Dennis sharply in the side of the head. Dennis made a sound like raffia and fell over sidewise. The crow had come in for a horrible fling of a landing and was hop-skipping hopefully across the grass to Cabal. He looked down at it without fondness.
“Why couldn’t you have been something with a bit of style?” he asked it. “A raven. A rook.”
“Kronk!”
“A penguin. I really wouldn’t have been fussy.” He looked at the crow, and the crow looked expectantly at him. “Oh, very well,” he said finally, and tapped his shoulder. With the bird ensconced, and in company with the quarrelling dead men, Cabal set off for home with rather less enthusiasm.
Still, even with the unwished-for company, it was still impossible not to feel some small pleasure at seeing his house when finally they approached it. The tall house thrust up out of the hillside as if it had always been there, although its style was only mid-Victorian, the cut stones of its construction somehow appearing soot-stained despite the nearest factory chimney being over thirty miles away. Considering that the nearest neighbour was three miles away, back along the path, it seemed somehow out of place that it should have a garden wall and a front gate. After all, surely the whole hillside was its garden? One might think that, but one would be wrong; there were things in Cabal’s garden that he had no desire should get beyond it, which was why every coping stone along the wall top concealed a sigil of warding, magical markings that kept the things inside, inside, and the things without, without.
Cabal paused before the gate. By the post, there were a few bones that certainly hadn’t been there a year ago. A couple still had gobbets of fresh meat attached. These he threw down the hillside for the crow, which swept after them making joyous noises, all of which were “Kronk.” He shook his head. Circulars, hawkers, and salesmen were welcome here — it was cheaper than having to buy in meat. At least the denizens of the garden would be fed, and he wouldn’t have too much trouble with them.
He opened the gate and walked in, followed by Dennis and Denzil. A multitude of tiny chiming voices started whispering from the herbaceous borders. “It’s Johannes Cabal! Johannes Cabal! He’s back!” Dennis and Denzil, clown faces creaking, looked dubiously at each other. Cabal stopped by the corner of the house and pointed down the path that led around the side. “You two. Nothing personal, but I’m not having a couple of shambling disasters like you shedding pieces all over the Persian rugs. Down there you’ll find a hut. That’s your new home.” As he watched them shuffle slowly out of sight, he ruminated that — not for the first time — he’d have something rather nasty in the woodshed.
The crow clattered down onto the wall and looked at the herbaceous borders with a lively interest. It was in the market for some small snacks, and the whispering things seemed likely contenders. “I wouldn’t, if I were you,” warned Cabal, as he searched through his key ring. “My garden is a remand home for criminally insane fairies. Where do you think those bones by the gate came from?” The crow looked at him, cocked its head, and demonstrated the intelligence that had its species on vermin lists the world over. It flapped its wings and landed on the small portico over the front door, safely out of the way of fairy darts and slingshots. Discretion wasn’t the greater part of valour for crows. It was the only part.
The front door swung open almost soundlessly beneath Cabal’s hand. It was dark inside; every curtain was drawn, every shutter closed. On the mat by his feet there was some post, which wasn’t unexpected; he’d had a long talk with the garden folk about acceptable visitors and enforced it with flashcards and cold iron. What was surprising was a circular for patios that had somehow got through. Turning it over, Cabal found scribbled frantically on the back, “They’ve got me cornered for gods sakes get help.” He crumpled it up and threw it in the wastepaper basket. What use did he have for a patio?
He dropped his gladstone bag on the hall table and breathed in the air. Musty and a little damp, but not as bad as he’d feared. He would set about airing the place tomorrow, but right now he was expecting a visitor, and it wouldn’t do to be unprepared. Where to begin? A fire would be pleasant and serve to start drying the place out. The living-room grate was clean if slightly dusty, just as he’d left it a little over a year ago. In the scuttle he found sufficient coal and some kindling. It all felt cold and a little damp, and Cabal doubted that it would catch without some help. Taking some paper that he had handy, he padded it around the wood and built the coal on top of it, lit a match — a Lucifer, to be exact — and set fire to the paper. He sat cross-legged on the rug and watched the flame drive the moisture from the wood, watched the kindling began to char and, finally, to burn. Some gentle blowing to provide encouragement for the nascent fire, and finally he could lean back, satisfied. He would really have liked to toast some crumpets or pikelets, but there was nothing perishable in the larder; he would have to renew his order at the grocer. He took out his notebook and opened it, touching the tip of the thin pencil with his tongue. Perhaps some tea, then. It would be stale but still drinkable. He started making notes.
Abruptly it became a lot colder in the room, and he realised tea was going to have to wait. His visitor had arrived a little earlier than anticipated. Out of the deep shadows in the corner stepped the Little Old Man. “Ahem,” he said, using slightly more phlegm and hacking than was considered polite even amongst camels.
“I was wondering when you’d be making an appearance,” said Cabal, without looking up from the notebook in which he was making a list of things to do.
“His Worshipfulness isn’t best pleased,” said the Little Old Man gravely. “In fact, he’s in a regular ranting bate.”
“Good. If I can give him so much as a tiny fraction of the pain and disappointment that this year has given me, I shall be a happy man.”
“He’s saying that you cheated him.”
“I did nothing of the sort. Tell him that if he continues to disseminate such slander, then he shall be in receipt of a sharp letter from my solicitor.”
“But he
“Then perhaps he should look up ‘petard’ in a dictionary and take his medicine. Our dealings are at an end, and I did
“The deal was the ninety-nine souls you’d managed to get. You’ve short-changed him. He’s not best pleased, I can tell you. You’ve made an enemy there.”
“Surely that’s his job.”
“You know what I mean. I mean a
“The only thing I’d like to ‘work out’ of you is your liver with a cold chisel.”
The Little Old Man took an angry step forward, his pretence at bonhomie vanishing like a snowflake on a griddle. His face worked violently, as if he were having some seizure; then he roared a roar not heard around those parts since the late Mesozoic and started to swell. Growing larger in the flickering firelight, he took a step towards Cabal, who finally deigned to look up at him.
“Ah,” said Cabal, “so there you are. Finally taking some notice, are you?” For the Little Old Man was certainly looking rather more Satanic.
The thing that was now not nearly as little or manlike as it had been a moment before clacked its claws on the floor and snarled, “Where are the contracts for the Winshaw and Barrow women? They were part of the deal!”
“No,” said Cabal. He got slowly to his feet and looked the thing in the face. “The deal was for the contracts in the box. You’ve got them.”
“Those aren’t the ones I wanted! They’re garbage!”
“My, don’t you sound petulant? I know you were going to get those souls anyway in the course of time, but it’s still no reason to be ungrateful. I may have removed a couple from the box before I arrived, that’s true. But the
