Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute (14 page)

‘Death is a very relative term here, sweetie.’

Cabal was briefly unsure whether to be more rocked by the discovery that he was talking to a woman whom he knew beyond all reasonable doubt was dead, or being called ‘sweetie.’ He decided ‘sweetie’ could wait.

‘Miss Smith? That
is
you, then?’

‘Smith . . . That is a name I haven’t heard in a very long time. Here, I am simply the witch of the old cemetery, and it suffices.’

‘I heard that you killed yourself when they came for you.’

‘Then you heard the ramblings of ignorant minds. I was not dead, only sleeping. The
Opusculus V
contained a formula for a certain narcotic that allowed dream travel here, into the Dreamlands, even for somebody unskilled in focused dreaming. I was in a coma, as they would have discovered if they had had a doctor with them.’

‘Yes,’ said Cabal, gravely. ‘Torch-bearing mobs tend to be very weak on bringing along medical personnel.’

‘The first I knew that something was wrong was when the ritual of return failed, and I realised that it was because I had no body to return to. Tell me, Johannes, what did they do to me?’

‘Outside, they had hanged you in effigy. So . . .’

‘There was a rope handy. How cowardly. And what became of my body?’

‘They realised belatedly that they were in a lot of trouble, buried you in a shallow grave, and disappeared back to their homes to carry on the charade of being decent people.’

She cocked her head slightly, and Cabal had the unnerving feeling that she could see him perfectly well, despite the lowered cowl. ‘And how is it that you know all this detail, hmm, Johannes?’

‘You know full well that I wanted the
Opusculus V
for myself. I have the first four volumes, but they are of limited use without the fifth.’

‘Let me guess. You ransacked my rooms after the coast was clear? But . . . you did not find it.’

‘Because it was not there,’ said Cabal, finally feeling better about his searching skills.

‘And when you could not find it, you cut your losses by taking my body for experimental material.’ Cabal blanched. The witch laughed with delight and pointed at him. ‘Ha! Just an educated guess, Johannes. It’s what I’d have done in your position.’ She paused. ‘Oh, God. You’ve seen me naked.’

‘You made a very beautiful corpse,’ said Cabal, making an ill-judged attempt at gallantry.

She smiled at his discomfort, but it was not a cruel smile.
‘So here we are.’ Then the smile slipped away and she said, in the steady, forceful voice of an oracle, ‘Johannes Cabal, you are in terrible danger. You should never have accepted the commission of the Fear Institute. You should never have come to the Dreamlands. Now it is too late to avoid. You must face the coming dangers. You are a scientist, and the very idea of destiny is anathema to you, but there is more than one sort of destiny. Yours is not predetermined, but it is a narrow path. You must cleave to this path, for if you step from it you will fall.’

Cabal listened, impressed despite himself. ‘And how will I know this path?’

‘Your own will shall guide you. You must search for the Phobic Animus, and you must find it. You must do so with urgency and determination, never permitting distractions, never losing your way.’

‘But there will be false leads, wasted time. How can I be sure that I am staying on the path?’

‘To err is human, Johannes. Mistakes do not matter as long as they are honest, as long as you never, ever hesitate or give up. Do you understand me?’

Cabal was thinking hard. ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?’

‘Because this is the Dreamlands, and we all have a role to play here. You are the hero on the quest, and I am the wise woman who gives you counsel.’ She laughed, breaking character. ‘Neither of us is ideal for our job, but you just have to do what you can.’

‘Then why don’t you just tell me where the Phobic Animus is, Miss Smith?’

‘Oh, lots of reasons. First, that would make this a
really
short quest. “Oh, here’s the Holy Grail. It was down the back of the sofa the whole time.” Second, I honestly don’t know where it is. “Wise” isn’t the same as “omniscient”, you know. Third, one of your little pals is going to turn up at your meeting tomorrow with a strong lead. You should follow it.’

Cabal frowned suspiciously. ‘I thought you said that you’re not omniscient.’

‘I’m not. I’m just very well informed.’

‘And this is the extent of your power?
Scientia potentia est
? You have a spy network, and ghouls for bodyguards.’ He sighed. ‘You have no power to divine the future. So all that dramatic soothsaying was just that? Drama?’

‘I am doing a great deal for you, Cabal, even if you don’t realise it yet. As for power, the Dreamlands are different.’ Her voice had become dangerously calm. ‘A few weeks ago, a thief came here to steal jade from the pagoda. I like the pagoda, and told him to leave or face the consequences. He didn’t leave.’

‘So you set the ghouls on him. Yes, yes, I stood on his skull.’

‘How big a fool do you think that thief was? He came in broad daylight.’ Cabal furrowed his brow in surprise. The sun would drain the life from a ghoul. ‘No. It wasn’t the ghouls that made his eyes boil in his head or his roasting flesh peel from his bones.’ She lifted her face a little and, as she did so, the cowl fell back far enough for him to glimpse her eyes. Then he knew that she was telling him no more than the truth. ‘Not that the ghouls thanked me for doing their job,’ she concluded. ‘They hate cooked meat.

‘You should go now, Johannes. There’s nothing more that I can tell you.’

Cabal coughed awkwardly. ‘Thank you.’

She shook her head slowly. ‘No. Don’t thank me. I’m sending you into the worst trial of your life, and the only consolation is that the alternative is infinitely worse. I’m sorry. I wish it wasn’t like this. You’ve attracted attention of the wrong sort now, and there’s no going back.’

Cabal nodded grimly. ‘Nyarlothotep.’

‘
Don’t
say that name here,’ she snapped. ‘I may have power, but I’m a long way short of bullet-proof and I don’t need that sort of trouble.’ Then she laughed, surprising Cabal. ‘You know, I never have got into the hang of
thee
and
thou
and
prithee
and all that sort of stuff. “Bullet-proof.” I guess I’m just too modern for this place.’ She sobered a little and regarded Cabal through shadowed eyes. ‘But you’re right. You’ve caught on about
him
already, eh? You always were a clever one. The best rival a girl could hope for. I was so pleased with myself for nicking the
Opusculus V
before you. I knew you had the other four. You must have been
so
pissed off with me.’

‘Mildly,’ said Cabal, with extravagant understatement.

‘I’m sure. Look, you remember that town? On the high street, there’s a branch of Winwicks Bank with a safety deposit facility. You want box number 313. I can’t give you the key, but I doubt that will slow you down. A gift from me, Johannes. I hope you live to enjoy it.’

On the way out, Cabal happened upon two men doing a poor job of hiding bags of tools behind their backs. They looked at him, then back along the way he had come with some consternation. ‘’Scuse us,’ said one, ‘but have you just come from the old cemetery?’

‘Yes,’ said Cabal, casually resting his hand on his sword hilt in a not especially casual way.

The two men looked at where his hand lay, and the option of an impromptu mugging was almost palpably crossed off their inner ‘To do’ lists. ‘An’ you didn’t see no ghouls about?’

Cabal was interested if not surprised to see that, even here, the vast majority of criminals were stunningly stupid. ‘No,’ he said, with a pleasant sense of duplicitous honesty. ‘There were certainly no ghouls around just now. I was just admiring a magnificent jade pagoda there, and I felt entirely safe.’

The two men grinned at one another, thanked Cabal hastily and trotted off in the direction of the old cemetery. He watched them go with no ambivalent feelings. ‘A gift from me, Miss Smith.’ Then he continued on his way.

Oh,
Nyarlothotep
is such a naughty god! Full of wheezes and wizard pranks – which often involve wizards – he is more fun than the human mind can comprehend. So all we poor mortals can understand of his jolly clever jokes is the agony and the suffering and the blood and the madness. Yes, humans just don’t have much of a sense of humour, I’m afraid.

Now Nyarlothotep is one of the Outer Gods, who are terrifically powerful and see we humans as less than germs, which is only right. Nyarlothotep is super-special, though, because he has lots of different faces and lots of different personalities. It must be so much fun to wake up in the morning and decide not only who you will be today, but even what species you will be. If
you
were Nyarlothotep, what form would you like to have today? I think I’d like to be a dense, oily mist that could creep into people’s homes as they slept and give them acute radiation burns. That would be a splendid jape, wouldn’t it?

He has lots of names, too, to go with every mask he wears, but really he is always good old Nyarlothotep. He isn’t just a very funny clown, though. He is also the soul of the Outer Gods and their messenger, so he is terribly, terribly busy. But don’t worry. Nyarlothotep always finds time to play his tricks. What fun!

IN WHICH THE EXPEDITION CROSSES THE SEA AND CABAL TAKES AN INTEREST IN THE LEG OF A SAILOR

They met as arranged the next day, and immediately retired to an alehouse where they could drink wine or beer or a local tea, as they so desired, and eat seed cakes as they told of what they had discovered. All but Cabal, who said that he had researched the strange glitch in time they had experienced, but had discovered nothing of use. This was true, in a largely false way: he had asked a stablehand, who had said he’d never heard of the like. Then again, the stablehand had likely never heard of Damascus, apoplexy or soap, but as no one queried Cabal on the size or demographics of his sample, he did not feel the need to burden them with such details.

Cabal’s disappointing luck aside, everyone had something exciting to report.

Bose was the first. ‘I spoke with the archive keeper and
asked him if he had ever heard tell of something called the Phobic Animus –’

‘Hardly likely,’ said Corde, ‘since we coined the term.’

‘– or anything similar,’ continued Bose, a little testily. ‘He
had
heard of something known as the “Frozen Heart”, which is described as being the epitome of all fears.’

‘The “Frozen Heart”,’ said Cabal. He was looking out of the window, drinking his tea slowly. His seed cake sat untouched. ‘How poetic.’

‘Yes, that was what I thought,’ said Bose, happily, entirely missing Cabal’s tone. ‘This whole world is built on poetic principles. That is what led me to believe in the veracity of this line of research. I asked if these reports had a specific locale or locales associated with them. And they do!’

He produced a rolled-up piece of parchment from his sleeve and unfurled it on the tabletop. At its head, he had written in careful block capitals, ‘LIKELY LIST OF PLACES (SHUNNED)’. Beneath it was a list of perhaps twenty locations.

‘Well, it’s a start,’ said Shadrach, uncertainly. ‘But those places must be hundreds of miles apart. Checking every one of them will take months, if not years, subjectively speaking at least.’

‘This one’s handy,’ said Corde. ‘It’s the old cemetery right here in Hlanith. We can go there now.’

‘You can cross that one off,’ said Cabal, with a bored languor he did not feel. ‘I went there myself last night.’ They all looked at him in astonishment. He shrugged. ‘I’m a necromancer. Cemeteries and the like are my meat and drink.’

‘Not literally, though,’ said Shadrach, smiling.

Cabal gave him a dusty look. ‘One has to drop in. It’s a
professional courtesy. There’s nothing there but a bunch of ghouls and a mad woman who fancies herself a witch. The ghouls seem to believe it, as they leave her alone.’