Johannes Cabal and the Blustery Day (Johannes Cabal series) Page 2

  There was no answer, no sound at all but the steady tokking of the grandfather clock. Cabal waited. At one minute and fifty-five seconds past noon, the ticking stopped abruptly, plunging the house into silence. Cabal looked over his shoulder at the clock and then at the front door. “Melodramatic and tardy,” he called out. “What a dismal combination.”

  The Bonewind struck the front of the house like an express train. Cabal took a step backwards despite himself. It howled and screamed against the walls like a living thing, battering at the door, shrilling and banshee shrieking. Beneath these sounds, there was just audible a ghastly counterpoint of scratching and scrabbling as of a thousand bony fingers clawing to get in. The door rattled frantically in its frame and even seemed, to Cabal’s closely attentive eye, to bulge in a manner unseemly for English oak. But it held and it held well and Cabal’s confidence grew. The parchment strips that sealed the door into its frame made the physical barrier a metaphysical one too and seemed to be frustrating the wind’s efforts to enter magnificently.

  “My own variation on the warding of Kush,” he called to the Bonewind, as much to steady his nerve as to taunt this enemy. “Quite efficacious, don’t you find?”

  In answer, everything abruptly grew silent. Cabal ran to the living room window in time to see something outside that was clear air yet distorted the sky beyond it like molten glass, that was speckled with flecks of black that whirled into and out of existence on the moment, that held storm crows, finger bones and teeth as flickers in the light. Then it whirled upwards and he couldn’t see it anymore. He threw himself back into the hall and up the stairs in a ferment of agonised anticipation. Wherever it tried to get in, he had to be there to face it.

  Along the landings he ran, the Bonewind flinging itself against window after window in mounting fury, the light becoming filtered and profane wherever it passed. Window after window shivered and creaked in its frame, window after window rattled and squeaked as the bones of the wind hailed against the glass but, through it all, window after window held strong against the onslaught.

  After every failed assault, Cabal’s confidence grew.

  Onwards and upwards the Bonewind moved until it was battering upon the attic skylights. Cabal stood there in the middle of the laboratory floor, arms crossed, and looked up at it. It was a thing half seen in full sight. Something that had no right to be there but overstayed its short welcome, hospitated in the land of the living.

  Finally, it stopped its onslaught and hung in the air above the house. It and its intended victim watched each other.

  “Well, that must be frustrating for you,” said Cabal, understanding now that it sensed his words at a projective telepathic level. Interesting but not unknown. “You’ve tried every door and every window and they’re all warded against you; I had a busy morning. You daren’t even crack a pane of glass. We both know the penalty for that.” The Bonewind boiled and thrashed. “Oh, yes we do,” continued Cabal. “You can’t get in at all. I’ve sealed every door against you, every window, every gap in the structure…” He paused. In one movement he swept his blueglass spectacles into his hands and the eyes revealed were wide with surprise and horror. “Ach du lieber Gott,” he cried in a terrible voice, “the coal hole!”

  In that moment, the Bonewind was gone, whirling down and around the outside of the house. Cabal, meanwhile, put his spectacles back on, checked his watch and waited, his paroxysm of terror quite gone. Ten minutes later the air above the house convulsed again and the Bonewind was back.

  “My mistake,” said Cabal conversationally. “The boiler’s oil fired. Hope you didn’t waste too long looking for a non-existent coal chute? You did? Ah, well.” He scratched his ear. “I suppose that takes us ten minutes closer to nightfall.”

  The Bonewind dropped with a massive certainty toward the house as imminent as an elephant, screaming in anger. Unlike an elephant, it bounced. The wards were strong against it and it would find no way in. Cabal drew up a chair and arranged himself comfortably, lounging back so that he might watch the Bonewind through the skylights. He reached over to where he had flung his jacket carelessly on the workbench and found his cigar case in the pocket. Lighting up one of the thin, dark cigars he favoured on the rare occasions he smoked, he leaned back and observed the furious entity that had been sent to kill him in a manner too horrible to describe. After a few moments of silent consideration, he started puffing smoke rings at it. The Bonewind made a crackling howl that reverberated around the valley and vanished from view.

  Cabal laughed a low laugh and settled down to enjoy his cigar.

  Time passed slowly. Despite his display of sangfroid, Cabal knew perfectly well that he remained in deadly peril until the Bonewind was forced to leave the corporeal realm and returned to its home of negative life. According to the almanac the sun would set at a little after six, which meant he had almost five hours to wait it out. There was no reason why the wards would fail before then, but it would be a foolish man who would not allow for such an occurrence and Cabal was no fool. He settled down to transcribe some experimental results to his permanent notebooks but never once took the satchel off.

  The afternoon wore on. He heard the Bonewind travel through the back garden at one point, making a mess of the herbaceous border as it went. Frustration had made it quite childish and spiteful. He wondered what would happen to it when it failed – as he now felt quite sure it would – and returned to whence it came. He hoped it was something bad; he had been rather fond of his herbaceous border.

  At a little while past four, Cabal decided he wanted a pot of tea. Just about to rise from his chair, he paused and considered. Did he really want some tea? No, he decided after some introspection, he didn’t. The desire was being triggered by something else, something internal. His subconscious was trying to tell him something but, being a subconscious, couldn’t just go ahead and tell him. Oh, no, it had to get all “signs and symbols” with him. Cabal usually didn’t get cross with the workings of his inner mind because, after all, it was on his side and had often helped him the past. He just wished it wouldn’t insist on being so bloody abstruse. Under the circumstances, however, he couldn’t help but feel a little irritated.

  “It’s a matter of life and death, isn’t it?” he said to himself, very literally. “Nothing to do with tea. What is it?”

  The desire for a nice, unnecessary cup of tea and a slice of Swiss roll grew in him. “I don’t want a cup of tea and I haven’t even got any Swiss roll in the larder.” Or did he? Cabal didn’t usually forget things but he had an odd paranoid feeling that perhaps there was, really, a Swiss roll. A nice one. On a plate in the larder. Why didn’t he go down and see?

  “Look, I need a clearer idea of why my life depends on Swiss roll and tea. If I’d wanted tea, it would’ve been over an hour ago at three. It’s now,” he checked his pocket watch, “a quarter past four. Why drag tea into it at all? As portents go, it’s… it’s…” he paused, then pulled his watch back from his waistcoat pocket. It wasn’t fifteen minutes past four at all.

  “It’s seventeen minutes past! Ach, Scheiße!” He was already running for the door. On the top landing, he snatched up a bust of Napoleon and threw it violently down the stairwell. Not even pausing to see its effect, he flung himself down the stairs.

  In the hallway, a few of the Skirtingboard People jumped in surprise when the bust shattered into fragments behind them but it only gave them momentary pause. They had other things to do. By the time Cabal bounded from the bottom landing and came down in a crouch amid the plaster fragments, he was too late. He just had a momentary impression of a slip of parchment vanishing under the skirtingboard by the door, the realisation that the short strip that had sealed the letterbox was gone.

  Then the Bonewind was in.

  The flap of the letter box flipped up and the Bonewind poured through like water through a pierced hull, distorting the image of the door like gelled air. Flashing blackness detailed its heart as it rose tall and triump
hant not ten feet away from Cabal.

  Cabal’s hand drove reflexively into the depths of the satchel and grabbed at something – anything – to use as a weapon. His hand closed on some small glass vessel that he flung with a smooth whiplash action into the centre of the boiling chaos, and hoped for the best. The glass bulb smashed against something that wasn’t there in any true scientific sense and its contents, a grey metallic powder, spilled and flared, caught by the flexing gusts and drafts that were the Bonewind’s muscles and fibres.

  Cabal blinked; the bulb had contained the powder of Ibn-Ghazi and its power was to render the invisible visible. For ten heartbeats, for an eternity, he looked upon the true face of the Bonewind.

  “Seen worse,” said Johannes Cabal and bolted for the stairs.

  The Bonewind darted after him, angling up and sideways to negotiate the stairwell. Cabal flung fistfuls of unholy caltrops and mystical cantrips after him as he ran but they fell away uselessly from the raging thing that pursued. In its eagerness to be upon him, it accelerated too harshly up the well and overshot the landing Cabal was on. In the moment it took to turn and descend, it had lost him. It jetted onto the first floor hall and hung there, listening. For long moments, there was nothing then, distantly, a clink of metal from one of the rooms. The door to the room offered no resistance to an entity like the Bonewind; despite being locked, it was easily torn from its hinges and dumped down the stairwell to finish amid bits of Napoleon’s head. With a shriek, the Bonewind started into the room… and halted. On the bed lay an ancient skeleton chained to the bed-frame. After a moment, the skeleton turned its skull to look at the shattered doorframe and waved one bony hand at its visitor in a gesture that seemed more matey than threatening. The Bonewind hovered, confused. It was not very intelligent and confused easily. It had shredded plenty of living flesh from skeletons in the past but was at a loss what to do in this situation. Its indecision evaporated with the sound of Cabal breaking cover from the next landing up and charging up the stairs. With a hunter’s cry, the Bonewind was after him. On the bed, the skeleton flopped back to rest with a faint air of exasperation about it.

  Cabal made the attic laboratory with less than a second to spare. He slammed it hard behind him but was immediately shoved back as the door was dealt a fearful concussion that tore the striker plate out of the frame. Cabal pushed it shut with all his strength and weight. In the moment before his dreadful pursuer could deliver another blow, Cabal bit at his right index fingernail and deliberately tore it down to the quick. Blood welled immediately. Using his fingertip as a gored brush, he marked the wood of the door with a triangle in a circle, stepped away from it and barked an incantation in a language that left his throat raw.

  An abrupt, terrible silence fell.

  Then the door moved in its frame – slowly, so slowly – upwards. Then down again. Up and down, up and down, faster and faster until it was rattling, chattering like a fever patient’s teeth. Cabal walked slowly backwards; the impromptu seal he had placed upon the door could only last a matter of minutes at most and sunset was still comfortably over an hour away. He had to think and think quickly. He looked around. The Bonewind was a creature of death, a gateway to a place where life was treasured as a foodstuff, the only foodstuff. A wasteland of death hungered for him, ravened for him.

  Perhaps, thought Cabal, perhaps I can poison it.

  Sucking at his torn fingertip, he flicked quickly through his notebooks with his free hand. Behind him, the door was vibrating so rapidly it was no longer visible as a sharp image but only as a blur within the stationary frame. A few splinters flew from the top and bottom ends as it started to fall to pieces. He ignored it, busy with his retorts and powders, fluids and reaction vessels.

  The door was whining, a sound that ranged up and down from the subsonic to the ultra, rattling everything in the house. Cabal clenched his teeth and fought nausea as the sound battered and shook him. He clipped electrodes to either side of a sealed vessel and flung the bayonet switch of the spark generator. Just a few more seconds, just a few more…

  Suddenly the frequency of the door climbed and swooped, heterodyning in strange patterns that defied conventional theory. Cabal was aware that his nose had started bleeding even as he cut the power. He smeared his already bloody fingertip in the red stream that ran across his lips and dripped from his chin, flicked open the vessel’s lid and allowed a drop to fall inside. Something flexed within, a movement he felt rather than heard. He looked steadily at the door and waited his moment.

  The door didn’t explode. Instead the vibration stopped instantly and the door stood motionless, still filling the frame. Then it crumbled silently into sawdust, but for the muffled thud of the handle and catch mechanism falling into the soft bed of freshly powdered wood. Cabal’s expression became grim; he hated hanging doors. Somebody or something was going to pay for that. The Bonewind swept in, screaming its victory. At the same moment, Cabal turned the reaction vessel to face the oncoming monstrosity and opened it wide.

  Experiment 473 was a success. The best sort of success. The sort of success that comes in a compact little bundle and flings itself straight at an eldritch weather condition. The sort of success that is immediately devoured by a portal between here and somewhere else, a place where life is savoured as a delicacy. A place that has never experienced anything like Experiment 473.

  If it were possible for a body of air to have an expression, the Bonewind would have looked aghast. It had every right. Somewhere within it, somewhere beyond it, Experiment 473 was running amok – furious to be given life but damned if it was going to give it up. The Bonewind grew quiet, curdled slightly. Cabal picked up another vessel and aimed it. “There’s more where that came from,” he said. The vessel was empty, naturally, but the Bonewind wasn’t to know that. It backed away, moaning dismally.

  “Get out of my house,” said Cabal, quietly. The Bonewind faltered uncertainly. “Get out of my house!” roared Cabal and released the vessel’s catch.

  The Bonewind retreated slowly out of the laboratory, apparently regarding the vessel Cabal bore before him as a vampire regards a cross, or almost everybody regards a Jehovah’s Witness. Once over the banister railing it descended quickly to the ground floor, Cabal dogging it every step of the way. In the hallway, it moved to the door, fumbled pathetically with the flap of the letterbox for some moments and then slunk out through the slot. The whole performance had a sense of shame and humiliation about it that, under the circumstances, Cabal rather enjoyed. He daubed the letter box with his own blood, made himself hoarse repeating the incantation and then flopped to the floor, exhausted. All in all, he considered, it had been a very long day.

  Night fell and Johannes Cabal knew that he was safe from the Bonewind. No time to rest, though; things to be done. After making an adjustment to the boiler’s pressure valve, he went to the woodshed and got out his old bicycle; there was a bit of shopping he wanted to do at the village and it couldn’t wait. Of course, the hardware shop would be shut but they’d open for him. They would if they knew what was good for them.

  Cabal finally went to bed a little past midnight but, although he extinguished his light and laid down his head, he didn’t sleep. There was still a certain business to attend to. He lay there, eyes shut but completely conscious for over four hours, waiting.

  At seventeen minutes past four, the whispering started. It began, inevitably, at the skirtingboards no more than a couple of inches above the floor and travelled across the room toward the bed. It got perhaps three feet before there was a loud clack and a strangled cry. The whispering moderated – panic set in. It headed off at an angle but almost immediately there was another snap. And another. And another. The whispering was now a very quiet frenzy of terror as the Skirtingboard People blundered into one after another of the two hundred mousetraps that Cabal had spent the best part of the evening mining his bedroom floor with. He listened attentively as the choir attenuated and diminished, the voices thinning away until o
nly one remained. “Carefully does it,” the last tiny voice said to itself, “Take my time. If I can just get back to the skirtingb..."

  Snap.

  Cabal listened carefully but the only sounds were the ticking of his alarm clock, the more resonant clicks of the grandfather clock in the hall and the wooden box on the deep shelf above the fireplace in the living room singing “Spread a Little Happiness” quietly, to amuse itself. These were the usual sounds of the house and did not disturb him. Johannes Cabal rolled over, smiled in the darkness and went to sleep.

  Author’s Afterword

  I hope you enjoyed the preceding. This was the first Cabal story published, and has been out of print for a long while now. Thanks to the wonders of e-publishing, however, I am able to present it to you once more.

  A brief note on how it came to be published. It did the rounds of likely magazines in the early part of the century, but no one seemed interested in the doings of a ill-tempered necromancer. One magazine it went to was “Weird Tales,” who also turned it down. About a year later, however, I received an unexpected email from George H. Scithers saying that he was helping with the launch of a new magazine from the publishers of “Weird Tales.” The story had been rejected originally because it wasn’t felt to be a good fit with that magazine, but George thought it would do nicely to offset the general unremitting doom and insanity of the new one, to be entitled, “H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror.”

  I shall be eternally grateful to George for remembering my story and choosing it for inclusion. Without that, it’s quite possible that the subsequent dominoes might not have fallen and Cabal would have remained trapped forever on my computer. Thus, I regard George as one of Johannes Cabal’s godparents, and why this story is now dedicated to his memory.