Man had vanished.
Marvellous, Cabal thought. I don’t even get an instruction book.
He took a small black object from his pocket and squeezed a button on its casing. A wicked-looking blade flicked out. He unrolled some of the “cloth” from the dark roll and cut a long strip from it. Then he got a small ball of hair from the sack, a rag from a barrel, and finally the femur. He carefully tied the hair to the bone, using the piece of cloth. “A rag, a bone, a hank of hair,” he intoned quietly as he wrapped the whole thing in the strip of skin. He regarded the finished object with a scornful shake of the head. “I hate this sort of thing.” He looked for some clear floor. “‘I invoke thee.’” So saying, he lobbed the untidy mess into the clearing.
Down in Hell, a black ball of blood diminished very slightly in size.
The mess came apart long before it reached the floor with more violence than might be regarded as natural. The bone hit the floor first and stopped abruptly, standing neatly vertical. The skin struck it and wrapped tightly about it, so tightly that after a moment it was impossible to tell where its edges were. The bone lurched as more bones budded and flowed from it, but as quickly as the new bone appeared it was submerged in the flowing skin. The small ball of hair landed on top of the growing stack of organic material, teetered, and fell off. It tried repeatedly to regain a perch but seemed doomed to failure. The rag whirled around and around the structure, too fast for Cabal’s eye to follow closely but he got the distinct impression that it was changing colour. The stack of bones was producing a spinal column with a painful clicking pop as each vertebra grew out of the one beneath it. As it completed the thoracic section, ribs sprang out like the opening of a clothless umbrella. The skin flowed upwards like the rising level of a liquid within a glass, almost concealing the bubbling formation of organs within the torso. Arms suddenly burst out as swiftly as the blade of a flick-knife, reminding Cabal to put his away. The circling rag swept in and flew a complex weaving pattern over the surface of the body, and where it flew, clothing appeared. Like ghastly toast, the skull popped up from the neck and grinned maniacally in the way that skulls do. Even when the skin wrapped over it, it continued to grin at Cabal with immodest glee. The skin rolled over the ivory vault of the brainpan like a rising tide over a boulder on the beach, met at the top, and sealed.
Standing before Cabal was a man who hadn’t existed a minute before: slightly shorter than he, black, painfully thin, and dressed in black trousers, white shoes with black spats, a white shirt, and a gleaming waistcoat of black and white vertical stripes. In his hand was a straw boater with a yellow band about it. The man clapped it on his head just in time to prevent the hank of hair settling on his entirely bald skull. A few hairs made a dive for his forehead and knitted quickly into eyebrows, but the rest balanced on top of the boater forlornly for a moment before dropping lifeless to the floor. The man watched it go with dawning dismay, quickly lifting his hat and checking his skull. He was disappointed to find that he was as bald as a cue ball.
“Oh,” he moaned, “oh, man,” and finally, with an air of exasperation, “oh, shit!” He looked down his body, examined his wrists, looked at Cabal as if the roof had just fallen in, and ran around. “A mirror, man! There’s gotta be a mirror around here!” Cabal watched him run. The man found a large grimy piece of silvered glass that may have once been part of a mirror and held it up to his face. He couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing and scrubbed at the surface. It didn’t improve things.
“Look at me,” he wailed. “Look at me. You’ve made me the skinniest guy in the whole world!”
“I did nothing of the sort,” said Cabal testily. Everybody was
“But, but…” The man put down the mirror and approached Cabal, emphasising every syllable with his hands. “But you were the one sortin’ out the components, man. Where’s my fat?”
“Fat?” Cabal realised he may have made a small oversight. “Rag, bone, hair. That’s traditionally it. Nobody ever said anything about fat.”
The painfully thin man waved his hands in disbelief. He looked quickly around the car and ran for the corner in long, angular strides. He grasped a crate and pulled it out into the open. Stencilled on the side was a single word: “Lard.”
“Just a little dollop, that’s all, man. That’s all I needed! I could’ve been a fine-lookin’ man, guy. Instead of which, I’m nothin’ but a bag of
“Well,
“D’ya think that would work?” asked Bones with piteous hope.
“Not for a second. Look, in a little less than a year, all this” — he indicated the immediate environs — “goes, and you, my vain friend, return to the components whence I raised you. So — you must try to understand one simple thing. In one year’s time, there won’t be enough of you left to amuse a dog. Thus, I don’t care what you look like, and neither should you. Our immediate concern should be getting this show on the road. Now, are you going to help, or am I going to have to dispose of you as an unsuccessful experiment and try again?”
Bones put his hands on his hips and allowed himself to slouch into a sassy pose not unlike a crane-fly with attitude. “You am de boss, baaaahss. Dis dumb-ass boy sure am yours to comman’, an’ ain’t
“Excellent,” replied Cabal, unperturbed. “Now, come over here.”
“I was bein’ sarcastic,” said Bones in his normal voice — a cadenced tone in a largely American accent with perhaps a hint of French growling through the long vowels — as he walked to where Cabal crouched by the stack of signs.
“You were being tiresome. Look at these.”
“Freaks, derring-do, eighth wonders of the world. Looks pretty standard sideshow stuff to me.”
“So which ones are exciting? Which ones will people come from near and wide to see? I need to know.”
Bones looked at him questioningly. “Why you askin’ me, boss? You the man with the plan, aren’t you?” He looked closely at Cabal. Cabal continued to go through the boards, trying to find the secret. “You
Cabal stood up and stepped away. He glared at the signs. “I don’t understand. Why would anybody want to waste their time looking at this sort of nonsense? It’s just rubbish! Bogus exhibits, deleterious mutations, lies! None of this is real! None of it’s lasting! They’re just…” He sagged. He hadn’t felt so useless in years. “Dreams. I don’t understand it.”
Bones was having a few problems as well. “But you volunteered for this, didn’tcha? Him downstairs wouldn’t just sock you with this gig unless you knew what you were doing, would he?”
“It’s … a wager.”
“A bet?” If Bones had lived a generation for every one of the five minutes he had so far drawn breath, he still couldn’t have been more surprised. “You got a bet on with the Man himself? You’re crazy! Nobody ever wins against the Man! He’s …” Bones tried to think of a convincing metaphor. He failed. “He’s the MAN, man!”
Behind the dark spectacles, fire returned to Cabal’s eyes. “He’s not going to win this one.”
“You’re kiddin’ yourself!” muttered Bones with evident disdain. “Only folks in stories get the drop on His Satanic Luciferiness. Sorry to be the one to break the news an’ all, but you’re screwed, Jack.”
Cabal ignored him. He was looking at the signs again.
“I have to work to a budget, so I can’t just start everything. I have to make some management decisions about what to go with and what to leave. Some of these sideshows will be useful; others will just waste my resources. I need advice. Mr. Bones, which sideshows shall I invest in?”
Bones shook his head regretfully. “I can’t help you, boss. End of the day, I’m just walkin’ dust. You’re the only real person round here. Your call.”
“I can’t,” replied Cabal conclusively. “I don’t understand people, either. I’ll have to get my advice from somewhere else.” He looked into the distance for a long moment. Then he took a deep breath. “I think I know just the person.” He walked to the exit and jumped down onto the track. Denzil and Dennis were sitting by the train, throwing stones at the crow. None were going even remotely close, but it watched the proceedings with keen interest all the same. “You two,” he spoke sharply. “Obey Mr. Bones’s instructions until I return.”
They looked up as Bones stuck his head out and looked down on them from immediately above. He grinned. “Howdy!” They smiled dozily and waved back.
“Crow! Here!” Cabal ordered. The crow flew to him without hesitation and landed upon his shoulder. “You’re coming with me, so I know you’re not up to mischief.”
