Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

embodiment of an archetype: the old codger with the flat cap and the grey beard. He cackled, he rolled his own foul-smelling cigarettes, and, when on form, he could be relied on to dribble. He was exactly the sort of person that makes youth fashionable. He was also one of Satan’s numerous avatars: fragments of his personalities and random thoughts that had taken form in the mortal realm. They allowed him to maintain a steady background hum of elemental evil in the world while he concentrated on more important things down in Hell. His cribbage game, for example. Until recent events, the Little Old Man had been Cabal’s only contact with Satan. This was the entity that he’d sold his soul to years before, and the entity that had invalidated more lines of research with his wilful interference than Cabal cared to remember.

The Little Old Man sat on a crate and watched Cabal investigate the dark corners. “Oh, Johannes. I’m hurt,” he said cheerfully. “After all we’ve been through.”

Cabal, his cursory examination of the boxcar completed, walked back to him. “‘All we’ve been through’? All you’ve put me through, surely? If you hadn’t bought my soul and then been such a pervasive nuisance ever since, none of this” — he made a gesture that encompassed the whole train — “would have been necessary.”

The Little Old Man shrugged. “I was only doing my job. You can’t expect altruism from one of Satan’s little helpers.”

Cabal sighed. “Look, I’d really like to be able to say that I’m delighted that you could make it and it’s a real tonic to see you, but I’d be lying.”

“I know.”

“So do you think we might cut along with a little more alacrity, all the quicker to get you out of my sight? I am, after all, on a rather tight schedule.”

“Schedule,” said the Little Old Man, holding up a finger. “I’m glad you reminded me. You’ll be needing this.” He reached into his grubby old coat and produced an hourglass a little over a foot in height. Instead of sand, however, it seemed to be filled with an incredibly fine powder. Tiny motes made their way from the upper chamber into the narrow neck and cascaded downwards. Despite the steady stream, the floor of the bottom chamber barely had a dusting upon it. “This shows you how much time you’ve got left. You know how one works, don’t you?” Cabal gave him a look. “’course you do, clever lad like you. Anyway, when all the grains have fallen from top to bottom, time’s up. Simple. Oh, one thing to remember. This isn’t the actual glass that my better part has down in the hot place. It’s a sort of repeater, relay thing. You can do what you like to this one but it doesn’t affect the time you’ve got left. See?” He turned the glass. The motes fell upwards regardless. The Little Old Man held it at different angles, but nothing made any difference. Time was still passing, and the grains carried on falling in a steady, gravity-boggling stream. “Neat, eh? Goes down a bomb at parties, I can tell you.”

“Really?” said Cabal as he took the glass. “I’ll have to hold a soiree just to impress my friends.”

“You haven’t got any friends.”

“I’m not holding a soiree, either. You have a problem with sarcasm, don’t you? Now, do you have anything else fascinating to impart or can I kick your wrinkly little carcass down the embankment, as I so dearly wish?”

The Little Old Man huffed. “You’re not nice.”

“Your” — Cabal searched for the right word — “founder has given me the task of sending one hundred souls to eternal torment. To be quite frank, I don’t think my name is ever going to become a byword for popularity.”

“You’re right there.” The Little Old Man searched inside his capaciously shapeless coat and finally found a thin file box as broad and wide as foolscap by an inch deep. He undid the thin black tape ribbon sealing it, took off the lid, and showed the contents to Cabal. It was a pack of forms printed on some sort of faintly yellow parchment. Cabal leaned forward and read the top line.

“‘Voluntary Damnation Form. To be filled in by the damnee. EAGH/I.’” He straightened up. “I see the hand of Arthur Trubshaw at work here.”

“You’re not wrong,” replied the Little Old Man as he tied the package up again. “One hundred forms to be handed in fully completed in a little less than a year’s time. Feeling up to it, Johannes?” He passed over the box. Cabal hefted it and looked around.

“I’m not sure. I accepted this challenge on the understanding that I would have the Carnival of Discord on my side. As yet, all I seem to have been given is a rolling junk shop. Tell Satan — no carnival, no deal.”

“No carnival? No carnival? This is it! Wagons roll! The Greatest Show on Earth! Use your imagination, why don’t you?”

“Imagination? I’d have to be hallucinating before I could believe this shambles was the Greatest Show on Earth.”

The Little Old Man got up from the crate and walked over to the back wall, shaking his head and muttering about young folk today. Leaning against the wall was a stack of broad wooden boards half covered by a tarpaulin. This he whipped off in possibly the weakest theatrical flourish Cabal had ever seen, to reveal that the boards were signs — battered and peeling, but signs nonetheless.

“Here you go. Here are your sideshows. ‘See! From the Mysterious East! The Enigmatic Cleopatra! Three Thousand Years in the Tomb Yet Still the Most Beautiful Woman in the World!’ Good, eh? What’s this one? ‘Marvel at the Bat-Faced Boy! Direct from the Darkest Jungle!’ Woooooh! Scary stuff, isn’t it?”

“The sheer preponderance of exclamation marks is terrifying in itself.”

“That’s just traditional. ‘Gasp! At the Log-Headed Girl!’ That can’t be right.” He probed at the flaking paint. “Surely it should say ‘ Dog-Headed Girl’? Oooh, no. It does say ‘ Log-Headed.’ That’ll pull the crowds.” He nodded confidently at Cabal.

Cabal had lost patience with the Little Old Man’s drivel. He stood by the open door watching Dennis and Denzil’s painfully slow progress along the trackside with the mildest interest possible.

“Oh, yes,” he said over his shoulder. “They’ll come from miles around for this. ‘Roll up, roll up. See the world’s largest collection of antediluvian signage. Gasp at the decrepitude. Be astounded by the grammar. A fascinating show rivalled only by the lint in your navel.’ I’ll have to fight them off with a stick.”

The Little Old Man narrowed his eyes and thought carefully.

“That’s sarcasm, isn’t it?”

Cabal looked out at the Flatlands again. He really didn’t care anymore. This whole thing was another of Satan’s dim-witted jokes. He had no idea why he bothered.

“Yes,” he replied. “That’s sarcasm.” He turned and walked over to the stack of signs. “This is a pointless enterprise without personnel. I don’t have any.”

A sound made them turn to the door. Dennis had reached it and was just contemplating how best to climb up when Denzil — who’d got the rhythm of walking worked out to his satisfaction but hadn’t yet appreciated the myriad complications involved with stopping — walked into him. They both fell out of sight. After a moment, there was the sound of a slow and considered fight.

“Well, none worth speaking of,” Cabal corrected himself. “If I’m not even to be provided with people to try to make something of this mess, then you might as well have these forms back now.”

The Little Old Man cackled.

“How can you say that, Johannes? Don’t you like a challenge? Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Easily outweighed by my sense of being made a fool of.”

“But you have been provided with people. Sort of. Look around you.”

Cabal looked around him. He was still alone in a grimy dump of a boxcar with only the dubious company of the Little Old Man. “I am looking. All I am seeing, however, are candidates for landfill. What are you getting at?”

The Little Old Man went to the centre of the car and swept his arms around to encompass all that was lying about the place. As a dramatic gesture, it might have been at home in musical comedy. Light musical comedy. “Here are your people, all around you.” He reached into a box and pulled out a bone that Cabal immediately recognised as a human femur. “Here are your riggers” — he dropped it and plucked a ball of hair from a sack — “your barkers” — he put his hand on what Cabal had assumed were rolls of cloth leaning in the corner. “Your concession-stand holders. Your whole carnival is here. Just use a little” — he tapped his temple — “imagination.”

Cabal walked over to inspect a roll. “What do you mean?” He looked closely at the material and belatedly realised what it was. “This,” he said dryly, “is human skin.” There was no reply. He looked around, but the Little Old