The Necromancer (Johannes Cabal, #1)

by Jonathan L. Howard

Lots of forms. Stacks of forms. An average of nine thousand, seven hundred, and forty-seven of them were required to gain entrance to Hell. The largest form ran to fifteen thousand, four hundred, and ninety-seven questions. The shortest to just five, but five of such subtle phraseology, labyrinthine grammar, and malicious ambiguity that, released into the mortal world, they would certainly have formed the basis of a new religion or, at the least, a management course.

This, then, was the first torment of Hell, as engineered by the soul of a bank clerk.

Some excitedly speculated that he must be a messenger from the Other Place, that the end times had finally arrived. Others pointed out that nothing in Revelation referred to a man in a black hat and sensible shoes.

You’re making a fundamental error. I’m not dead. Tried it once, didn’t like it.

“I call you liar!” he spat. “I call you duplicitous, mendacious, and thoroughly amateur at both enterprises.”

The throne was only a throne by dint of its vast scale; otherwise, it was simply a big stone chair on the end of a rocky peninsula that extended into the centre of a lake of boiling lava. All in all, it was less of an audience and more of a fireside chat.

“You’re not listening, Johannes. I want souls, not carcasses. Not dead. Damned. Signed, sealed, and delivered. I’ll provide the forms, and the signatures don’t even have to be in blood. Although it would be nice if somebody made the effort now and then.”

Satan wasn’t listening; he was already on to the next file. “Dr. Diabolo’s Torture Garden.” He smiled, evidently proud. “Terrific success. We’re franchising that.”

When he finally deduced that he had been unceremoniously translocated, he marked the revelation with a filthy curse in a language that had been dead eight thousand years, so managing to be amazingly erudite and amazingly uncouth in the selfsame instant.

“Kronk,” said the crow, which may have meant, “Yes, master.” It could equally well have meant, “You’ll have to catch me first, bugger-lugs.” Either way, it kept its sphincters tight.

“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.”

“No, don’t tell me. Let me work it out. I’ve had little enough to amuse me all this time. The highlight was the spider races. I used to eat the losers. Then I’d eat the winner so he wouldn’t get cocky.

“Look, what’s bothering you? It’s the homoerotic aspect, isn’t it?” Cabal was running. “Well, don’t flatter yourself,” shouted the thing after him. He had been heterosexual before his unfortunate change in circumstances, and now he had doubts that he was even that.

A crowd was growing. A young woman nervously held up her hand. “I … I … I have freckles.” Cabal gestured fiercely over his shoulder with his thumb. “We have the Dalmatian Boy. Next?” A man called, “I have a bit of an overbite.” “Then gaze in delighted wonder upon the Human Shark. Next!” “My nose is a little too pert,” said an almost stereotypical blond woman on the arm of a wealthy man. “It can’t be as pert as Simone Sans-Nez the Noseless Girl’s. Next!” “I’m ginger,” called a teenage boy. “So you are. Yes, my friends! The House of Medical Monstrosity! Slake your thirst for abomination and abnormality!

Yes, its true function was to tempt to contentiousness, to blasphemy, argumentation, and murder, but you could also win coconuts.

Horst’s surprise was replaced with mild amusement. “It’s root beer, Johannes. Have you never had root beer?” Cabal looked suspiciously at him, then at the bottle. “People drink this?” “Yes.” “For non-medicinal reasons?” “That’s right.” Cabal shook his head in open disbelief. “They must be insane.”

When the silence drew out, Cabal turned to ask for the rest of the sentence. Horst had gone. Cabal swore, an ancient expletive involving sexual congress between an extinct tribe and an extinct species.

Cabal had already had several run-ins with wilful young lads who seemed to believe that their age and sex gave them some sort of dispensation to commit petty acts of vandalism. One such had particularly infuriated him and was now a permanent fixture in the House of Medical Monstrosity. They’d moved smartly out the next day before the local constabulary got involved.

The soldier looked back, and he might have smiled as he stepped forward. Cabal had the vague impression of something dispersing with unbelievable rapidity, and then the doorway was empty. Outside, there was nothing to see. Cabal walked out and looked up and down the track before looking up into the cold blue sky. “Good luck,” he said almost to himself. “Give my regards to Katy.”

Cabal rubbed out the phonetic characters with the toe of his shoe as he enunciated them, “‘Eenie. Meenie. Minie. Mo.’ There, all gone.” Satisfied, he left the station for the last time.

“An army of lunatics. Fancy. There’s a football match on, then?”

Cabal dimly recalled that the musical genius who’d decided to put on Necronomicon: The Musical had got everything he deserved: money, fame, and torn to pieces by an invisible monster.

“Your problem, Rufus Maleficarus, is that you never understood why magic was superseded by science. If you listen to the sad old wizards up in their keeps and the witches in the dales, you might believe it had something to do with the passing of the Seelie and the Unseelie from our world. Or the dust-sheet of cynicism settling on our hearts and driving out the wonder. Or children refusing to say that they believe in fairies. Poppycock. I’ll tell you why. Convenience. I only practise necromantics because there’s no other way of doing it. But when it comes to applied sciences, technologies, any spotty Herbert with a degree and a lab coat can perform greater wonders than Merlin.”

They all jumped in unison as the steam calliope started up behind them, all turned, and said minor variations of “Oooooh!,” one less “o” here, one more exclamation mark there.

“Hello,” said the little girl, and smiled a gap-toothed smile brightly at him. Cabal suddenly felt broody. An insane urge to find a good woman, settle down, and have a couple of kids—one of each—lit upon him like a thing out of a nightmare.

“The baby. It’s recovered.” “It recovered from death? Remarkable. Children are so resilient.”

He looked sharply at the crow. The near-irresistible desire it had been feeling to take off with his nice, shiny spectacles suddenly evaporated. Instead, it tried to grin in a charming, inoffensive, non-spectacles-thieving fashion. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

“Death. Death is your enemy. My enemy. Life can be cruel, that’s true. Death is always cruel.”

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.”