Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute

themselves to the tops of the Karthian Hills.

The view from up there of the land ahead was less salubrious than that of the land behind. Off in the distance the rolling landscape grew less marked, and the colour drained from it by degrees until the verdant hills gave way to the pale brown sand dunes of the Cuppar-Nombo Desert. Nor was this shade of brown the usual golden brown of Earth’s more scenic deserts, but rather the bland light brown of cold cafe au lait, a tired, sad colour, too depressing even for hospital walls. All three men looked at it, and all three drew long breaths that they allowed to sigh out of them as if they were deflating. Why the founders of Golthoth had decided to build their city in such a vile environment when the beautiful Karthian Hills were so close was a mystery for the ages. Perhaps the land had been different then; perhaps the Karthian Hills had belonged to some enemy; perhaps the Golthothians really, really liked nondescript brown sand.

Whatever the case, there was a strong sense that their pleasant interlude was drawing to a close, so they settled down to have possibly their last meal without sand in it for a while. They opened their jars and unwrapped their linen parcels, made a picnic of sorts upon the grassy swathe, and chatted about this and that as they ignored the brown expanse and ate their bread, cheese and salted meat.

They had just been discussing the careers that would abruptly wither away once fear was removed (fortune- telling, several branches of insurance sales, and a large part of the Stock Exchange, the latter principally comprised of fiscal pirates on a monetary sea kept profitably choppy by groundless panic and thick-pated optimism; Cabal asked if there was an equivalent form of the Phobic Animus that encouraged such wide-eyed hopefulness, and if so, would they be hunting this cosmic Pollyanna next?), when Corde noticed that the slice of meat he had just that moment arranged upon a cob of bread was no longer there.

After some undignified glaring in all directions, his eye settled upon a young cat, barely more than a kitten, that was padding away as swiftly as it might with a large slice of stolen meat in its mouth. It withdrew to what it believed was a safe distance some twenty feet away, and started tearing morsels from its booty, all the while keeping a watchful eye upon the three men in case they couldn’t resist the desire to recover their food, grass- stained and cat-drool-coated as it was.

‘Well I never!’ said Corde, in righteous anger, but Cabal just made a soft bark of amusement in his throat, and Bose laughed out loud. Corde was suddenly aware that the only beings in that world or any of its immediate neighbours that gave a fig for the fate of his sandwich filling were himself and the cat that had stolen it. He smiled and laughed, a little forcedly, for inside he seethed with resentment at the animal.

‘What sort of cat is that?’ asked Bose, gesturing at it with a meat sandwich that Corde couldn’t help but notice was unsullied by cats. ‘What do they call those? It’s a brindle, isn’t it?’

‘Brindle,’ said Cabal, slowly, as if Bose had said something thoughtlessly hurtful, ‘is a patterning. A brindled cat is a tortoiseshell.’ He sat, watching the cat through narrowed eyes, a faint sense of disquiet growing within him. How far from Ulthar are we? he wondered.

‘Well, whatever type of cat it is,’ said Corde, with faux-joviality, ‘it’s a little rascal.’ So saying, he took up a small stone and shied it in the general direction of the cat. When Cabal saw what he was about, he started to call a warning but it was already too late.

The stone was little more than a largish piece of gravel, and it was thrown without any great force. It should have described a leisurely parabola and bounced upon the grass near the cat, probably startling it. The stone did few of these things. With the horrible inevitability of nightmare it left Corde’s hand like a bullet from a slingshot, spinning rapidly as it went, arced sideways, and hit the cat hard in the head. Even from where they sat, the harsh crack of bone was sickeningly distinct. The cat fell to one side, shaking violently in spasm. Corde leaped to his feet and ran to it, but it was already still and dead by the time he got there.

A man dressed as a great fighting general, he stood over the pathetic little form, put his hand to his mouth and gazed in horror at the blood, the exposed brain and the split eyeball. The cat looked more as if it had been shot than hit by a casually tossed stone.

‘Is it dead?’ he heard Cabal say, in clear, neutral tones behind him.

‘I didn’t mean to . . . How is that possible?’ Corde simply couldn’t take in how bizarre the sequence of events was. ‘I barely even . . . It makes no sense.’

Cabal was not interested. ‘Gather up your things immediately,’ he instructed. ‘We must be on our way before they find out.’

‘What?’ Corde looked uncomprehendingly at Cabal. ‘What are you talking about, man? Before who finds out?’

‘The cats, naturally.’ Cabal was already striding past him, heading westwards in the direction of the desert.

‘Cats, Mr Cabal?’ Bose was having difficulty in raising his voice to be heard through a mouthful of sandwich. ‘The cat’s owners, you mean?’

‘I mean what I say, and I am in deadly earnest. There are plenty of things to be rationally afraid of in the Dreamlands, and not all of them are as overt in their threat as wamps.’

Based on Cabal’s usual sang-froid, if he decided that killing a cat, even accidentally, was cause for a rapid decampment, that was sufficient motivation for Corde and Bose, who decided to hold their questions for later, quickly gathered up their belongings and headed westwards too.

When they caught up with Cabal his first words were, ‘In the shade of the ivy on the wall to the left is a cat. We are discovered already. Our only hope is to reach the desert and hope that their notorious laziness and dislike of discomfort prevents them following.’

Corde risked a sideways glance and saw that there was indeed the tumbledown remains of an old farm wall, upon which grew a generous dangling of ivy. Beneath it, he saw the glint of green eyes, and felt a strangely alien antipathy projected at him that did not make him think of tangled knitting and hairballs. He shuddered, and quickened his pace.

‘What is this?’ he asked Cabal. ‘They’re just cats. How is it that they’re dangerous?’

‘Because they are not just cats,’ said Cabal, now starting to break sweat as he, too, lengthened his step. ‘These are the Dreamlands, and what is here is the stuff of dream. Cats, as any rational person knows, are solitary, opportunistic, ambush predators, much like spiders, but with fewer legs and a better fan club. They are, by and large, stupid animals, the cleverest of the species being about on par with an average dog. I am no great admirer of dogs, either, I should add. My observations, while admittedly casual, are at least, therefore, objective. Cats, however, appeal to the anthropomorphising aspects of the human psyche like no other. They are credited with intelligence, cunning and an indefinable sophistication that, when regarded in light of their actual behavioural