Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute

Cabal watched the ghoul with carefully concealed worry. Ghouls were not necessarily ruthless killers all the time, just most of it. They were strong, resilient and unpleasantly flexible, armed with vicious teeth in their canine jaws and sharp claws upon their powerful fingers. Once they had been human, though, and vestiges of that humanity still showed in many of them. Most had been nothing more than vile cannibals in life, and joined the tomb legions of the ghouls as their appetites overwhelmed their physiologies, altering them in these loathsome ways. They were beasts long before they ever became ghouls, and their chaotic, insane minds had long since fragmented completely. Others, however, had come to this transfiguration voluntarily via decadence and intellectual preference, and held on to much more of their previous life. He had never heard of a ghoul being quite so jocular before, though.

‘They don’t taste like chicken,’ mused the ghoul. ‘I don’t know why people think that. They should try some before spouting such rubbish. Much more like pork.’ The ghoul sighed. ‘But I digress. I was explaining the state of that wall. First, this room had food, corpses if you prefer, in it. So we broke open the wall, took a few bodies and replaced the bricks after we went.’

‘And nobody noticed?’

‘Administration is poor in the Dreamlands,’ said the ghoul. ‘They come down here, think, Wasn’t there a body on that slab? then think perhaps they imagined it, and wander off to write a haiku. We got away with it for years, sneaking in and out as necessary.’

‘Hold hard,’ said Cabal. ‘This city has not been populated in millennia. How could you have been here when it was occupied?’

‘That? Two reasons. Ghouls are effectively immortal, barring accidents and foul play. Thing is, being a ghoul invites accidents and foul play. It all evens out. Second, the ghoul warrens, the great underworld beyond that wall, obey the confines neither of time nor space. I can enter here, and exit in Massachusetts sixty years ago, or on the Moon sixty years hence. Time and place mean a lot less to me than they do to you.’

Cabal was silent for a long moment. ‘You can travel through time.’ His tone was distracted, thoughtful.

The ghoul chuckled, an unpleasant sound. ‘Then one day all the bodies went – living ones up above, and dead ones down here. All gone. The city was abandoned. No, that’s not a good word. Abandoned makes it sound like they had a choice. Depopulated. That’s better. Like deforested. Chopped down where they stood and taken away. Much better. That has a sense of it. Then we knew they would come. The many-legged ones, with the bat faces and no eyes, full of fever and corruption. And people think we’re disgusting.’ The ghoul laughed once, a bark. ‘Then the big thing came and killed the many-legs. Crack! Crack! Crack! Off come their legs! Then, crunch! Crush the skulls so no new little baby many-legs pop out of the dead brains. Have to admire the big thing. Thorough. Methodical. Never stopped until the many legs of the many-legs were dangling from gutters and thrown over rooftops and anywhere at all except on the bodies of the many-legs. Every skull . . . crunch! Good job, big thing! Of course,’ it added, rubbing its chin in a very human gesture, ‘if we go up top it will pull off our legs and crunch our skulls too. So we don’t go up there. That hole was blocked when the many-legs came, unblocked when the many-legs died. Now we peek out – careful and crafty – but the big thing is never about. Haven’t seen it,’ it giggled, as if at a private joke, ‘only hearsay.’

‘What is this “big thing” of yours?’ asked Cabal. He had never had such a lengthy conversation with a ghoul before. Normally they consisted of little more than ‘Get back into your holes, you damned cannibals, before I shoot you,’ and rarely developed into a discourse.

‘Not of mine,’ said the ghoul. ‘Not of mine, oh, no. Of somebody’s, but not mine. They’ve gone away now, but the big thing will be here for ever. Oh,’ it added conversationally, ‘it will kill all of you. Pull off your legs and break your skulls. Will probably pull off your arms, too. A limb’s a limb to the big thing.’

‘We got in easily enough,’ said Cabal, not sounding quite as confident as he would have preferred.

‘It didn’t know you were there. It was bored, lying down in Artisans’ Square, eating weeds. Very bored. Then you made lots of noise and it came looking for you.’

‘We did not make lots of noise,’ snapped Cabal. Then he thought of Bose’s indignant squeal. ‘Well, not very much.’

‘Made enough. The big thing has little ears, but they are very keen.’

Cabal frowned suspiciously. ‘I thought you said you’d never seen it?’

‘Oh, I haven’t.’ The ghoul smiled innocently, which went about as well as could be expected. ‘Not in person.’

‘Why are telling me all this? Why are you talking to me at all? You could have killed me in the dark. What do you want?’

The ghoul’s smile vanished in unexpected ways, as if its face was made of melting wax. When it spoke, the light, bantering tone was gone. ‘I want you to succeed, Johannes Cabal. It is your destiny. If you fail, more than your puerile Fear Institute will be disappointed.’

‘I don’t believe in destiny,’ said Cabal. ‘We make our own futures.’

‘So we do. But I have seen your future, Johannes Cabal, and if you do not find the Phobic Animus, you will lose more than your life or your soul.’

Cabal’s eyebrows raised. ‘I’m not sure I have anything more than those to lose.’

‘Oh, yes, you do. Believe me, necromancer. You do.’ The ghoul paused and looked up at the ceiling, as if listening. When it looked back at Cabal, it said, ‘Your colleagues – I am sure you don’t think of them as friends – are above us now. The two parties are together and they have entered the temple. They are following your tracks through the dust. Soon they will find the disturbance at the place where you fell through into this room and they will attempt to rescue you.’

‘Attempt?’ said Cabal, slowly.

‘Attempt,’ confirmed the ghoul, ‘because you will already have freed yourself.’ It nodded up the short ramp that ran beside it. ‘The door is not locked. I know you would not wish to be indebted to them for rescuing you.’

‘I’m their guide,’ said Cabal. ‘They would be lost without me. Don’t delude yourself into thinking they would rescue me out of any finer feelings.’