Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute - Jonathan Howard

‘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.

Surviving fragments of Cyril W. Clome’s manuscript for The Young Person’s Guide to Cthulhu and His Friends: No. 2 Nyarlothotep, the Crawling Chaos

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!

Chapter 6

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.’

Corde looked sceptical. ‘You just strolled in and had a chinwag with some ghouls?’

‘Hardly a chinwag. I walked in, they threatened to eat me, I threatened to destroy them, there was some sabre-rattling, literally in my case, and that was that.’

‘And then what?’

‘And then I had my dinner. White wine and chicken al fresco upon the tomb of a pair of tragic star-crossed lovers.’

Corde was not sure if Cabal was toying with him. ‘And that was all?’

‘Alas, yes. I had wanted some cheese, but couldn’t find any at short notice. It was a shame. Cheese goes so well with tragedy.’

Corde stared hard at Cabal, and it took Shadrach’s proclamation of his own results to regain his attention. ‘I was invited to a dinner at the merchant adventurers’ hall last night,’ he said, with due deference to his own importance. ‘This truly is a fascinating world, mixed from the epic poems of Greece and the sagas of the Vikings, the thousand and one nights of Scheherazade, the mystical tales of the Orient, and the Dreamtime of the antipodean Aboriginals. I heard so many strange stories . . . but none of the Animus. One place came up in conversation, however. By all accounts a terrible place, and it may be the one.’ He drew Bose’s list to him and cast an eye down it. ‘There, the sixth one down, Oriab Island. There are supposed to be some ruins where something terrible happened once upon a time, although nobody seems to know what.’

Cabal already had his bag open and his notes folder out. ‘Oriab Island is not small, and the ruins might be anywhere. We need more exact information before investing effort in going there.’

‘The ruins are on the banks of Lake Yath,’ said Corde, a little smugly. He leaned back in his chair, and took a decent draught from his flagon of beer before elaborating. ‘I got talking to some sailors . . .’

‘What you do in your own time . . .’ muttered Cabal.

‘. . . and they said Oriab Island was the place to go. Not because there’s much likelihood of the Animus being there, but because in the ruins by Lake Yath lives a hermit. He will speak to one person a year, and will answer one question that they ask. It doesn’t matter what it is, he will always know the answer.’

The others considered this. ‘How do we know that nobody has already asked him this year?’ said Shadrach.

‘Because,’ said Corde, with a wily grin, ‘nobody has asked him a question for at least two years, and the person who asked on that occasion died shortly afterwards from his wounds.’

Bose’s eyes had gone very large. ‘Wounds?’ he asked tremulously.

‘There is something in those ruins that doesn’t like strangers,’ explained Corde. ‘That’s the scuttlebutt, anyway.’ He took up his flagon and raised it to Shadrach, whose expression of moral outrage indicated that he thought ‘scuttlebutt’ was some act of frightful sordidness.

‘We shall have to book passage, then,’ said Bose. ‘Ah. How do we do that? I assume that we cannot simply walk into a shipping agent’s and buy tickets in the same way that we travelled to America.’

Shadrach took the opportunity to demonstrate his utility and, in so doing, distract himself from theorising as to exactly what scuttlebuttery consisted of. ‘I know the very man. I made his acquaintance last night. Captain Lochery, owner, master and commander of the Edge of Dusk. A galleon.’ He settled back to bask in the plaudits.

‘Galleon’ was putting it a little strongly. The party had proceeded down to the stout, oaken wharves, where stout, oaken ships waited at anchor, quite possibly crewed by stout, oaken sailors because, after all, this was the Dreamlands. Almost the only thing at the docks that was not stout and oaken was the Edge of Dusk, a ship that had probably looked like it had seen better days right from the hour it was launched. It was not a galleon, that was clear to all of them, but it was Corde who correctly identified it as a cog, an earlier and smaller form of ship. As a galleon is to a cog, a cog is to a small toy with a sail that one splashes around in the bath to amuse oneself when one is either very young or an admiral. It was something of a disappointment, but Cabal pointed out that a true galleon, one looking like a refugee from a Spanish plate fleet, would have been greatly surplus to their requirements and to their budget. The Edge of Dusk was not pretty, but she was small, and on closer inspection bore an air of competence and functionality about her that Cabal, for one, preferred to her romantic neighbours, their sails blowing like the ruffled shirt of a hero in a novel for spinsters.

Captain Lochery himself was on deck as they approached the ship. He positively grinned with delight when he saw Shadrach and bounded down the gangplank to meet them.

‘Master Shadrach!’ he cried, grasping Shadrach’s hand in both of his and pumping it firmly. For Shadrach, who was used to handshakes with all the vigour of a cucumber sandwich left out in the rain, this was a surprise, and all he could manage were a couple of ‘Oh!’s and ‘Ah!’s in response.

Lochery, who outmatched his vaguely Scottish name with an accent that would have made Robert Burns sound English by comparison, was introduced to Shadrach’s companions and was polite and friendly with them all. When he reached Cabal, however, his mood faltered. He took in Cabal’s clothing, and said, ‘You’ll be a strong-minded one, that’s plain enough. This place will be a trial to you, no doubt.’

Cabal remembered the witch’s reference to a trial, but decided that he was not so foolish as to see meaning where there was only coincidence. ‘It has been noted before now, yes. Thank you.’

Lochery shook his head. ‘No, son, you don’t understand. The Dreamlands were built by dreamers, and dreamers are what they expect. Like a body fights an infection, this world will fight you.’

Cabal’s lips thinned. ‘Then I shall fight back.’

Lochery laughed, a fatalistic laugh of the sort reserved for gladiators, soldiers on suicide missions, and explorers leaving tents who ‘may be some time’. ‘I like your pluck, Master Cabal, but this is a world you’re talking about. You can fight it, but you will lose.’

Cabal looked around him. ‘I have no sense of the Dreamlands going to war with me, Captain. Do you? No black clouds, water spouts or monsters come to destroy me. I feel no more threatened than I might on Brighton beach.’ He spat into the water for punctuation. ‘Heaven forfend.’

‘Oh, it won’t be anything like that,’ said Lochery. ‘But I’ve seen men like yourself come here, and one of two things always happens.’ He leaned closer and spoke in a hushed tone. ‘The Dreamlands either destroy ’em, or absorb ’em. I’d buck up your ideas and try to fit in if you don’t want the ’Lands to do it for you. For an example, I went to sleep in the wrong opium den. Well, wrong in one sense. I don’t know what they’d mixed their stuff with but it brought me here. I guess it killed me too. My old body, that is. No goin’ back for old Cap’n Lochery. But, as you see, I fitted in. You should try to do the same, sir, or things won’t go so well for you.’ Seeing Cabal’s expression he raised his hands in conciliation. ‘Not a threat, son. Just a friendly warning.’

‘Do you always hand out metaphysical advice to your passengers?’ asked Cabal, growing a little heated.

‘Only those that looks as if they need it,’ said Lochery, with infuriating good humour. ‘And, for the truth, you’re not passengers yet. No negotiations have been made, no bargain has been struck.’

Shadrach held up a handful of gold from his purse and said, ‘Passage for we four to Oriab Island, Captain Lochery.’

Lochery’s grin widened. ‘And now they have, and now it has.’ He stepped to one side and bowed them to the gangplank. ‘Step lively, gentlemen. The tide turns soon, and then we’ll be away to Baharna, capital city and – ’tis no secret – the only city on Oriab Island. The only one standing, at least.’

It was their second experience of nautical travel on the expedition so far, but taking passage upon a form of ship that had been obsolete for the best part of six centuries was a very different matter from eight days aboard a modern steam liner. In the first instance, the Edge of Dusk was small, barely fifty tons, and lacked the comforts that Messrs Shadrach and Bose, in particular, had enjoyed so much while crossing the Atlantic. To be precise, the Edge of Dusk lacked any and all comforts, including privacy. The vessel’s single toilet was a cubbyhole in the rear quarterdeck with a piece of cloth held across the entrance by two nails. Inside was a bench with a hole and the ocean ten feet below. This, Captain Lochery proudly believed, was the very cutting edge of hygiene technology. Indeed, in high seas, it doubled as a bidet. This intelligence Shadrach and Bose received in a pallid silence, while Corde laughed, and Cabal looked at the horizon in the direction of Oriab Island.

They would be expected to sleep in hammocks along with the crew – as captain, Lochery had a small closet aft that he called his ‘cabin’ – and during the day were expected to stay at the rail and therefore out of the way as much as possible. Shadrach had suggested that, since they were paying passengers, seats upon the quarterdeck might not be unreasonable, but had quickly learned that, to a sailor, this was deeply unreasonable. Instead they had grudgingly been given permission to sit on barrels on the foredeck with the proviso that they get out of the way immediately if ordered by any member of the crew. Going from ordering stewards around to being ordered around by any passing sailor was a great humiliation for Shadrach in particular, and he spent much of the first two days of the trip standing by the bowsprit, stony-faced and uncommunicative, to the extent that the crew started calling him ‘the spare figurehead’ behind his back.